Heritage Languages at the Crossroads: Cultural Contexts, Individual Differences, and Methodologies

This Research Topic focuses on heritage languages at the crossroads by approaching heritage language bilingualism in an interdisciplinary way. A language qualifies as a heritage language if it is a minority language spoken at home in a majority language context. Any language can be the societal majority language in one context and the heritage language in another. While the number of empirical studies on language acquisition and processing in heritage language bilingualism has increased in recent years, heritage language bilinguals are an understudied subgroup of bilinguals. When examined as adults, heritage-speaker bilinguals tend to show significant differences in their heritage language performance (use) and competence (grammatical knowledge) from one another. This variation is particularly unusual because heritage speakers, like monolinguals, are native speakers of the heritage language.