BLINK · Blingual Literacy and Input Knowledge Outcomes: Tracing Heritage Language Bilingual Development
Horizon 2020 — Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions
- Duration
- 2018-08-15 → 2021-03-09
- EU contribution
- €208,400
- Participants
- 1
- Scheme
- MSCA-IF-EF-ST
Lines connect the coordinator with its partners.
Results in brief
Blingual Literacy and Input Knowledge Outcomes: Tracing Heritage Language Bilingual Development
BLINK proposes a novel approach to studying Heritage Language Bilingualism (HLB), combining offline and online methods. Heritage language bilinguals (HLBs) are individuals who acquire naturalistically a minority first language (L1) in childhood in their home, despite typically becoming dominant in the majority language of the larger society over time. While some HLB children, despite this naturalistic exposure to their home language from birth, end up with little or no productive competence in that language, some might be indistinguishable from their monolingual counterparts. BLINK's overarching goal is to unveil both how and why such perplexing outcomes of HLB tend to arise. We examine the role and weight of key variables that (potentially) contribute to ubiquitous differences between HSs and their matched monolingual counterparts. To this end, BLINK capitalizes on the relatively unique opportunity Turkish provides as a heritage language acquired in its diaspora in the EU (the snapshot will be Norway and Germany). BLINK's battery of experiments also fills a methodological gap in the HL literature by using oral production, online (eye-tracking) and offline comprehension experiments with the same HL populations, thus enabling one to see if modality of testing (production vs. processing in real time) brings anything to bear on HS performances. BLINK will have numerous societal and economic impacts as it is primarily related to language maintenance in minority/immigrant communities. Understanding the processes of language acquisition in immigrant populations is crucial because the child’s early education is primarily based on comprehending auditory language and speed of processing that have strong ties with successful learning.
Data: CORDIS, © European Union
Project objective
Bilingual Literacy and Input Negotiates Knowledge Outcomes: Tracing Heritage Language Bilingual DevelopmentThis project significantly adds to a burgeoning—roughly 2 and half decades long—sub-field of bilingualism studies, namely Heritage Language Bilingualism (HLB). We propose a novel approach that combines offline and online methods and focuses on a severely understudied, yet crucially important age group of heritage speaker (HS) bilinguals in an effort to fill crucial gaps in the available literature. We will examine the role and weight of key variables that (potentially) contribute to ubiquitous differences between these populations and matched monolingual counterparts. To this end, we capitalize on the relatively unique opportunity Turkish provides as a heritage language acquired in its diaspora in the EU (the snapshot will be Norway and Germany). Having access to balanced populations in both Norway and Germany and their respective multiple subgroups that differ in key variables (e.g. access or not to literacy education in Turkish) we will for the first time have a fairer chance to converge on an understanding of how and why HLB presents so differently from monolingualism and even other cases of bilingualism. Because HLB, deals with the development and maintenance of minority languages spoken in the home and small ethnic communities in a larger national context, it fits very well with the imperatives of the EU and its commitment to fostering cross-cultural integration while guaranteeing the rights of all to maintain their heritage languages and cultures. Understanding how to best fulfill language related EU imperatives and commitments is inherently related to understanding the cognitive, social and linguistic sciences behind HLB.
Original text from CORDIS.
Participants
- UNIVERSITETET I TROMSOE - NORGES ARKTISKE UNIVERSITET · TromsoCoordinatorNorway
Links
Data: CORDIS, © European Union