Policy Activity for Heritage Languages

Adult literacy is perhaps the single most effective language policy activity undertaken since devolution, in which the progress from an initial policy investigation process, subsequent policy determination, and resource allocation and program implementation has been very fast. Most writing on language maintenance and language shift, as well as on heritage language, uses the conceptual apparatus of sociolinguistics, and is located under the category Language in Society. The effect is that heritage languages are typically discussed from perspectives informed by applied and socially influenced linguistics, both rather code-centered, as well as by language policy and planning, which also reveals the influence of code-based language sciences. Heritage language-based bilingualism is often devalued by comparison with majority-community bilingualism that attracts celebration. B. Spolsky discusses the rarity of conjoining in a single language policy heritage language, national security issues in relation to language, and traditional foreign languages.