Reconstructing Bridges: Heritage Language Education of Asian Americans

Language use is a major factor in defining one’s cultural identity. People learn slang, lingo, jargon, idiomatic phrases, and other language tools, and with them participate in a cultural, social environment in which they can thrive. For ethnic minorities, however, there is the additional problem of the “heritage language.” A heritage language refers to “any ancestral language such as indigenous, colonial, and immigrant languages, which may or may not be a language regularly used in the home and the community” (Kim, 2003). For Asian Americans, and in particular Asian American immigrants, the prospect of learning or re-learning a heritage language raises questions as to their cultural identity. Between the widely differing cultures of America and East Asia, Asian Americans’ language use in and out of the home constructs an identity that portrays them as fundamentally Asian, or as fundamentally American.

To assess the bilingual language patterns of a very small sample of Asian Americans at Clark, I sent three members of the Clark community an email survey, asking them to comment on their uses of English and their particular heritage language. To create this survey I referred to studies of heritage language in Korean American high school and college students, as well as studies on patterns of Asian heritage language retention and attrition. All participants in the survey were female; they comprised of two students and one professor. One student, Rebecca, claimed Korean as her heritage language; the other, Juli, claimed Cantonese, the widespread dialect of southern China. The professor, Bridget, who incidentally teaches English, claimed Chinese as her heritage language and did not denote the dialect she speaks. Rebecca was born in New Jersey, while Juli was born in a small village in southern China and Bridget in Taipei, Taiwan. Both Juli and Bridget immigrated to the U.S. when they were children.

For all three, English is dominant in their everyday lives at school, but among their parents they switch to their heritage languages. Rebecca’s and Bridget’s parents are bilingual; however, Juli’s mother’s grasp of English is poor. Her father has some knowledge of English, but once Juli was fluent in her new language and actively using English in advanced schooling, Cantonese once again became the primary language of communication in her home. That all three speak their particular heritage language at home is not surprising. Across the board, the rate of heritage languages spoken at home by Asian Americans is very high; according to Johnson, “[t]he large proportion of Chinese Americans who are foreign-born (69%) contributes to the high vitality of the Chinese language as seen in the large proportion (84%) of Chinese Americans who speak Chinese in the home environment” (Johnson, 2000, p. 227). The rate of Korean Americans speaking Korean at home is similarly high (p. 218).

Despite speaking their heritage languages often, mostly to their families, the participants did not claim absolute bilingual fluency. While all three are fluent in conversational and scholarly English, Rebecca and Bridget admitted to poor reading and writing skills in Korean and Chinese, respectively. Juli made no mention of her Cantonese literacy, but mentioned that her Cantonese speech was only conversational and not scholarly. Also unlike other participants, Juli showed an interest in Japanese, not her own heritage language, but, like Cantonese, a character-based, decidedly foreign but Asian nonetheless:

"For me, speaking fluently (which I am not) in my native language is enough for me. Japanese is my interest. Maybe I’ve adopted the American value of individuality but I feel that my interest is more important than what I “should” learn."

Juli positions herself as both Asian and American, but grounded in the culture of the latter, “adopting the American values” of individuality and pan-Asianness. Certainly she does not view all Asians as one background or culture, but her interest in Japanese, today a language of power and commerce derived mainly from Mandarin Chinese, reveals something about wanting to know more about other parts of Asia, and perhaps, more about her “Asian self.”

Juli also states that she feels her interests in other cultures besides that of her heritage are more important than what she ‘should’ learn, meaning, what her parents deem she should learn. Indeed, as noted by Hinton, “[f]or many students, parental insistence on retaining the language and values of the old country became the source of intergenerational conflict” (1999). Part of this insistence of heritage language retention was put into practice with weekend heritage language schooling, part of the structure of their American lives (Brecht & Ingold, 2002). Rebecca and Juli attended heritage language and culture schools on the weekends, but both express resentment toward their time spent learning about their heritage cultures. Rebecca says she “absolutely hated it” because while she was enrolled in 6th grade in her English-speaking school, she was placed in the 3rd grade class at Korean weekend school and “was forced to hang out with kids much younger than [she].”

She was embarrassed about her inability to grasp the complexities of her heritage language, especially when surrounded b students three years younger. Juli expresses her lack of motivation to learn Chinese, as she had just gotten to the point of “adequacy” in English:

"I was mentally tired and didn’t see learning Chinese as that important. I was in elementary school (6^th grade?) so I wasn’t thinking about the future or my “heritage” or anything."

While Rebecca and Juli balanced regular schooling with heritage language schooling, Bridget reveals that while she did not attend special Chinese weekend school, her bilingual parents stressed Chinese at home once they felt it was under-spoken or not spoken at all. All three sets of parents showed similar encouragement to pass on their heritage culture to their daughters.Continued on Next Page »