Heritage Speakers as Real World Bilinguals

Institute Director: Maria Polinsky (University of Maryland)

Institute Organizers:

• Gregory Scontras (University of California, Irvine)
• Julio Torres (University of California, Irvine)

Important Links:

• Registration Information
• Schedule
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• Poster Guidelines

The Heritage Language Research Institute serves as a venue that brings together researchers, practitioners, and graduate students fostering the presentation and discussion of current developments in the field of heritage language studies. The Institute returns for its fifteenth installment, this time at the University of California, Irvine, a campus well-known for its commitment to studies of bilingualism. Starting from the observation that many instances of bilingualism involve heritage speakers, our Institute will place special focus on broader real-world bi/multilingual contexts within which such speakers operate. This focus will allow us to transcend the more familiar academic settings in which research on heritage speakers is often conducted. By integrating research, targeted pedagogical recommendations, and issues of language policy and social justice, the Institute will serve as a bridge between different viewpoints on heritage bilingualism. Researchers, practitioners, and graduate students in fields that focus on or engage with (heritage) bi/multilingualism—regardless of theoretical, methodological, pedagogical, or disciplinary perspective—are especially encouraged to attend and participate in the dialogue.

Sponsor(s): National Heritage Language Resource Center, Center for World Languages, Asia Pacific Center, Center for Southeast Asian Studies, UCI Department of Spanish and Portuguese, UCI Department of Language Science, UCI Humanities Center,UCI School of Humanities, UCI School of Social Sciences, UCI School of Education, UCI Department of European Languages & Studies, UCI Department of East Asian Studies, UCI Program in Global Languages & Communication, UCI International Center for Writing & Translation