Family expectations towards Spanish language maintenance and heritage language programs in Germany

1 Introduction

In situations of cohabitation between the migrant language and the majority language of the host country, migrant families face the difficulties involved in reconciling linguistic integration in the host society, on the one hand, and the transmission of the heritage language at home, on the other (Chumak-Horbatsch 1999; Guardado 2006; Iqbal 2005; Muñiz 2009; Xie 2010). Parents make decisions regarding family language management that depend, to a large extent, on their linguistic attitudes and expectations towards the heritage language and its intergenerational transmission. This paper provides an analysis of the relationships between the attitudes of Spanish-speaking families towards the transmission of the heritage language in Germany, as well as their expectations towards educational programs for the language’s maintenance and development.

Family language management involves the implicit/explicit and deliberate/non-deliberate strategies of parents to plan the conditions for language socialization and intervene in the linguistic development of offspring (Curdt-Christiansen and Silver 2012). In migratory contexts, strategies and decisions regarding language socialization are crucial given that the family is the main institution of socialization in the heritage language of future speakers. First, because the family is the first environment in which descendants come into contact with the migratory language(s); second, because, as a community of practice (Purkarthofer et al. 2022), it is the most immediate context of acculturation; and, third, because the family is a space that creates the conditions that allow activating the construction of multilingual repertoires.

However, the linguistic socialization of heritage speakers is not only reduced to the family space. It is a polycentric process (Blommaert and Backus 2013) in which educational institutions, the community of origin, and centers responsible for organizing activities in the heritage language are also involved, in addition to the home (Fishman 2001). In order to manage this complex ecosystem of language socialization through interaction or learning practices, parents of multilingual families make decisions and develop strategies (more or less deliberately) that can be focused on the home (internal practices) or the external spaces of language socialization, the heritage-language-speaking community or heritage language and bilingual education programs (see Table 1).

Within transnational migrant households, families are confronted with questions such as whether the heritage language should be the language of socialization in the household, what skills should be transmitted in the heritage language, what space should be given to the language of the host country within the household to foster linguistic integration, how multilingual skills can be fostered, etc. Within the nuclear family, families often try to direct the linguistic socialization of descendants by means of general strategies aimed at coordinating linguistic interaction among members through internal interaction practices such as the “one parent, one language” (OPOL) strategy; one language according to the communicative situation; the exclusive use of the heritage language at home (hot-house approach); and the practice of “translanguaging” (De Houwer 2020b; Lanza 2007; Piller 2002; Schwartz and Verschik 2013). When families try to foster interaction with other members of the heritage language community external to the family, one can then speak of external interaction practices. These may take place through contact with friends and acquaintances, or through social, religious, or cultural activities organized within the heritage community that are conducted in the heritage language.

Family language policy also includes decisions and measures aimed at guiding the learning itself (Leseman et al. 2007; Scheele et al. 2010). Within families (home), parents can engage in internal learning practices, such as the use of literacy resources to foster literacy and the development of balanced bilingualism, the creation of home-based learning environments, or the use of home-country transnational media to teach historical, cultural, and linguistic knowledge (Kwon 2017). This support is determinant for the mother tongue development of bilingual immigrant children (Orellana 2016). It may happen, however, that parents do not always have enough time or resources to carry out these practices. In these cases, provided that there is an offer and migrant families can access them, there is the option of resorting to external learning practices, carried out by external language professionals and language learning institutions (Curdt-Christiansen and Silver 2012), such as heritage language and bilingual education programs.

Previous work on Spanish as a heritage language in Germany (Álvarez Mella 2020; García García 2019; García García and Reimann 2020; Loureda et al. 2020; Méndez-Sahlender 2018) has shown that Spanish-speaking families demand educational support in heritage language and even contribute to create educational spaces in Spanish. The present paper focuses especially on the expectations of Spanish-speaking families in Germany towards heritage language programs as an external learning practice. For this purpose, the results of an exploratory survey study (N = 50) will be presented, which allows us to compare the main arguments justifying the decision of families to use or not to use heritage language courses available in Germany. These arguments are in many cases related to the families’ management of the other types of practices described above (internal learning practices and internal and external interaction practices). The study aims to answer two research questions:

1. What attitudes towards the maintenance of Spanish predominate among Spanish-speaking families in Germany?

2. What kind of evaluations of Spanish on the part of these families are related to positive attitudes towards heritage language programs?

2 Expectations towards heritage language courses: a multidimensional approach

Spanish-speaking families with a migrant background residing in Germany support the integration of their descendants into the host society by learning German. At the same time, they may decide to invest to a greater or lesser extent in the transmission of Spanish. The decision to make this investment is influenced by two factors: available resources (time, educational offer, purchasing power) and expectations about the social, cultural, and educational effects of language development that generally translate into cultural capital and social power (Norton 1995, 2013).

Family expectations consist of a set of beliefs about languages (generally socially shared within a community), which are usually founded on facts, arguments, and shared knowledge and ideologies, such as the number of speakers of the language, the possibilities of exchange (cultural, economic, political) that they offer, or by their social prestige. Thus, a family’s investment in acquiring or maintaining a language depends largely on whether they, or even their society, consider it necessary for their socioeconomic integration and part of the cultural capital that their family had previously accumulated (Bourdieu and Passeron 1970; Vigouroux and Mufwene 2020).

Moreover, family investment decisions are discursive in nature and based on different values that the maintenance of the heritage language acquires and that justify the investment in maintaining and learning it (Guardado 2018). Discourses on the maintenance of the heritage language revolve around several axes: instrumental aspects (usefulness of the language for the child’s future success, social mobility, and access to more resources); family cohesion aspects (relating to the role of heritage language skills for family unity both at home and with external family in the host country and especially in the origin country); identity aspects related to the child’s personal identity and cultural roots, or to a multilingual identity; affective aspects (emotional well-being of the child, self-esteem); aesthetic aspects (aesthetic appreciation of the language and its varieties); aspects linked to the recognition of the identity of the minority community, its culture (where it is also possible to find discourse of opposition to ideologies contrary to Spanish); aspects of linguistic correctness; and aspects linked to cosmopolitanism (especially present in families with high levels of education).

Based on the above, this study proposes a multidimensional approach that encompasses the six dimensions according to which migrant families assign value to the heritage language and its intergenerational transmission.

1. Family dimension. For parents, the maintenance of the heritage language(s) may have a value linked to the family itself. The family is understood here as an institution constituted by a set of internal and external relationships. We distinguish between a nuclear family composed of the relationship of cohabitation in the home, usually between father/mother and children, and the extended circle of other relatives with greater or lesser ties. Within the family nucleus, the issue of language is articulated around the language of the home, the weight of the heritage language in the communicative relations of the home. With respect to the external circle, the value of the heritage language is articulated around the maintenance of relationships between the children and the parts of the family that do not master the language of the country in which they reside, usually family in the country of origin or abroad (Guardado 2018).

2. Identity dimension. Either language skills or their lack mark the identity of speakers, from their cognitive dimension to their affective-emotional dimension, and are related to the identification of the speaker with the culture or cultures with which that language is associated. Language and culture are interrelated: while the heritage language influences the development of a multicultural identity, the awareness of the own cultural identity conversely also influences the desire to maintain or develop competencies in the heritage language (Fishman 1999; Guardado 2018).

3. Communicative dimension. The intergenerational transmission of heritage language has a communicative dimension linked to the formation of non-limited (Moreno-Fernández 2014) or non-truncated linguistic repertoires (Blommaert et al. 2005; Blommaert and Backus 2013). While speakers’ linguistic competencies are always limited, we speak of limited or truncated multilingual repertoires on two levels. On the one hand, parents often desire their children to develop a balanced bilingualism in which the proficiency of the two languages is at the same level. On the other hand, there is an intention that the children develop a Spanish that conforms to the linguistic norm (and prestigious varieties) (Guardado 2018).

4. Multicultural dimension. The intergenerational transmission of the heritage language is linked to a positive valuation of the intercultural competencies assumed of bilingual speakers in migratory contexts and to their bicultural identities. These are identities that are articulated at various levels or layers, in individuals where locally defined ethnic or nation-state identities are combined with feelings of panethnicity and cosmopolitanism (Guardado 2018). This awareness of one’s own bicultural identity and the critical appraisal towards the cultures of origin generates in heritage speakers a balanced bilingualism, as opposed to other attitudes that heritage speakers may present in which the unequal weight of one of the cultures that make up their identity against the other(s) manifests itself in an unbalanced bilingualism (Vilar Sánchez 2019).

5. Instrumental dimension. Discourses on language learning have an obvious instrumental or utilitarian dimension. Indeed, the continuous internationalization in many social spheres (economic, cultural, political, etc.) has led to conceiving language as a cultural resource that can open up new possibilities for transnational interaction between individuals and societies. In his ethnographic work, Guardado (2002, 2011, 2018 identifies utilitarian arguments in the discourses of Spanish-speaking parents in migratory contexts that refer to the expected benefits of investing in their children’s heritage language education in terms of social mobility: future economic benefits for their children through improved business and employment opportunities. Families construct the maintenance of Spanish through utilitarian discourses that refer to it as a tool for achieving better socioeconomic status (Norton 2000).

6. National dimension. One of the ways in which heritage language skills are valued is that their mastery is linked to the family’s place of origin. More than national or ethnic identification through language, this type of valuation refers to the fact that intercultural competencies in heritage language include the ability to interact with the linguistic, cultural, and social space of origin. This is even more evident in families with return expectations or in transnational families with a strong connection to the country of origin. Heritage programs can include content linked to the history and culture of the region of origin not only because of the link between language, culture, and origin, but also within the framework of a conception of the heritage language as an intercultural competence.

3 Methodology

The work presented here is a pilot study. Its design is based on the abductive method, i.e. based on the rigorous observation of small cases, the aim is to generate new hypotheses or adjust the formulation of theoretical models, assumptions, or subsequent research questions.

4 Results

4.1 Attitude analysis

4.1.1 Global analysis of attitudes

The analysis of attitudes towards the heritage language and its intergenerational transmission allows us to identify which dimensions are most important to the families. As can be seen in Figure 1, the parents surveyed identify themselves to a greater extent with attitudes linked to the family dimension of Spanish as a heritage language, especially for communicating with the part of their family that speaks Spanish. Secondly, parents value very positively the communicative dimension of the learning of Spanish by their descendants, a learning more focused on developing linguistic competencies to participate in all communicative interactions.

Figure 1:

Attitudes towards Spanish as a heritage language and its intergenerational transmission (average ratings).

The multicultural, identity, and instrumental dimensions of maintaining the heritage language also receive high ratings, close to 9 points, especially the intention that the child be interested in other cultures (multicultural dimension) and the belief that learning Spanish facilitates learning other languages (instrumental dimension).

Looking at the dimensions with scores below the mean, it is possible to identify a number of attitudes with which families identify less. Apart from attitudes linked to the national dimension, parents identify less with community-type attitudes (“It is important for me to maintain contact with Spanish-speaking families in Germany”) and with those related to linguistic ideologies more favorable to German as the language of the country of residence and integration, and to English.

4.1.2 How attitudes affect family decisions

This section compares the attitudes of families who send or have sent their children to Spanish classes with those of families who do not send their children to Spanish classes. In order to explain which attitudes affect the families’ decision, a two-stage analysis is offered: first, a descriptive analysis of the responses that allows us to observe the main differences; second, a logistic regression analysis that allows us to identify which attitudes influence the families’ decision and what is the direction and magnitude of their effects.

As shown in Figure 2, the largest differences (>1 point) between families are in the unfavorable attitudes toward Spanish. Families who do not send their children to Spanish education agree that it is more important for their children to learn German and have a more positive attitude toward English. On the other hand, for parents who do use Spanish education programs, it is more important to maintain contact with other Spanish-speaking families. Another relevant difference is that participating families identify more with instrumental attitudes, especially with the idea that learning Spanish makes it easier for their children to learn other languages.

Figure 2:

Attitudes towards Spanish as a heritage language and its intergenerational transmission according to the decision of the families to take or not to take Spanish courses (mean values).

If differences in the most shared attitudes are considered, different patterns are observed. Participating families assign greater importance to the family dimension, rated with an average of 9.5 points, while non-participating families identify more with attitudes related to the communicative dimensions. This difference is the result of two trends: a) That parents who send their children to Spanish as a heritage language classes show a high interest in the child being able to communicate with the Spanish-speaking part of the family and that parents who do not use Spanish as a heritage language programs value the use of Spanish in the family to a lesser extent. b) That parents who do not send their children to Spanish as a heritage language classes attribute higher value to the correct use of Spanish.

As for the instrumental value of maintaining the heritage language, it is more decisive in the first group (9.1 points) than in the second, and contrasts with the consideration by the second group of the multicultural dimension as the second most valued (9.3 points). No relevant differences are observed between the evaluations of the identity and national dimensions of the two groups. The latter dimension is the one to which less importance is attributed in all cases (around 7 points).

To analyze whether parental attitudes influence whether to send children to Spanish as a heritage language classes, a logistic regression analysis was performed. After adjusting the analysis model by eliminating attitudes that did not report statistically significant results (level <0.05), only four attitudes combined explain parents’ decision to include Spanish as a heritage language programs in their language management (see Table 5). The model shows a positive effect of the attitudes linked to the desire for the child to be able to communicate with their Spanish-speaking family and the positive effect of learning Spanish to facilitate learning more languages. The other two attitudes, the importance attributed by parents to the child having a correct command of Spanish and the greater importance attributed to mastering the official language (German), show a negative effect.

Table 5:

Logistic regression analysis with the attitudes that influence the families’ decision to take Spanish courses.

	Regression coefficient (B)	Exp (B)	p
I attach great importance to my son’s/daughter’s correct command of Spanish.	−1.421	0.242	0.049
I want my son/daughter to be able to communicate with his/her Spanish-speaking family.	1.666	5.291	0.045
Learning Spanish makes it easier for my son/daughter to learn other languages.	1.35	3.858	0.023
In Germany, it is more important for my son/daughter to master the official language.	−0.98	0.375	0.023
Constant	−6.021	0.002	0.234

5 Discussion

The previous section described the results of the analysis of the attitudes and reasons of Spanish-speaking families regarding the decision to send their children to bilingual or Spanish as a heritage language programs. The analyses conducted point to three aspects that deserve to be commented on in depth.

6 Conclusion

Throughout the sections of the article, the results of an exploratory study have been presented. The objective was to analyze the perception of families and their attitudes in order to understand the modes of linguistic management of Spanish-speaking families in migratory contexts and their relationship with educational spaces. The analysis of attitudes showed that the positive valuation of the family and instrumental dimensions of heritage language influence families to include bilingual programs or heritage language classes in their family language management.

The valuing of Spanish for family cohesion, especially for maintaining ties with Spanish-speaking family in the country of origin, is the most important attitudinal factor in parents’ decision to send their children to Spanish as a heritage language classes. The expectation of family cohesion through the use of Spanish also forms part of the set of reasons why parents make the decision to resort to outside classes or bilingual Spanish programs, an observation that underscores its weight. In this sense, the results point to the role of the heritage language in the construction of Spanish-speaking transnational families and to the need to consider this dimension both from the perspective of the study of family language policies and from educational approaches.

Regarding the instrumental dimension of the heritage languages, it should be considered that Spanish bilingual programs and heritage language courses usually underline the instrumental outcomes of acquiring bilingual competence, especially in terms of future educational and employment prospects. However, the results of this paper point to the advantages of balanced bilingualism for learning more languages as a relevant factor for parents investing in Spanish educational programs.

Another relevant aspect that emerges from the results of the study is that linguistic socialization practices within the family are a real alternative for Spanish-speaking families, even considering that these parents value their children’s correct use of Spanish very highly. Indeed, we expected positive attitudes toward correct Spanish to be more related to the use of educational programs, especially because the main objective of Spanish courses (especially the more institutionalized ones) is to provide students with literacy skills and guarantee the development of a Spanish that conforms to the linguistic norm. The opposite finding suggests either the importance of literacy activities at home or families having a more communicative than formal understanding of correct Spanish usage.

The study is impacted by the limitations inherent to an exploratory analysis. Nonetheless, the results presented here point to thematic areas of research that allow for a better understanding of the relationships between the two most important spaces of linguistic socialization: family and education.