2. Language as psychological refuge

The view of one's home language as a refuge, a source of emotional attachment and resonance, is one held with conviction by many audiences, the professional language teaching community as well as members of the public. Speakers in whom an L1 has been established find that new labels for familiar objects or experiences do not carry the same emotional valence in an L2. As is apparent, this discussion refers principally to the traditional distinction between ‘sequential bilingualism, or learning another language after acquisition of a native language, and so-called ‘simultaneous bilingualism’, or ‘bilingualism as a first language’, which occurs during infancy and early childhood, prior to school entry. Current scholars have remarked, appropriately, that this distinction is not nearly as clear-cut as it once might have been, for ‘some children go to school earlier and participate in complex multilingual encounters, in reality and virtual reality, with ease and frequency’ (García Reference García2009: 64) and propose instead the terms ‘childhood bilinguals’ and ‘emerging bilinguals’ to better characterize the dynamic interplay between age and circumstances of learning. Furthermore, other contemporary commentators (e.g. Martin-Jones Reference Martin-Jones and Heller2007) have pointed out that the focus on levels of language proficiency and away from the variety of contextual factors affecting the use and evaluation of multiple languages in education, which was typical of scholarship on bilingual education in the 1950s through 1980s, has now been largely superseded by greater concern for interpretive investigation of languages and language varieties in particular settings rather than efforts to distinguish a variety of idealized models or types of proficiency.

Many eloquent first-person narratives – Hoffman (Reference Hoffman1989) is a fine example – attest to the initial shock when the ‘living connection’ (1989: 107) between word and thing is ruptured by the need to use a new term. A Polish speaker learning English as a newly-arrived adolescent in Canada, Hoffman lamented that ‘“River” in English is cold – a word without an aura’, while ‘“River” in Polish was a vital sound, energized with the essence of riverhood, of my rivers, of my being immersed in rivers’ (p. 106): she had had extensive experience of rivers in Poland, but the English term did not evoke the same depth of feeling, the embodied and experienced knowledge, of the word in her L1. Abstract concepts such as ‘envy’ or ‘disappointment’ posed further problems for comprehension and use in English. Absent readily observable referents, they remained vague, and both comprehension and use had to be fine-tuned through trial and error in the new language. She was further dismayed that Polish words ‘don't apply to my new experiences’ (p. 107). Hers is an insightful retrospective account by an expert in linguistics and languages, and the phenomena recalled from her early contacts with English parallel some more traditional comparative investigations.

Still, this is one account among many. There is tremendous variability in the degree to which a first or native language serves as a consistently positive emotional foundation, variability that is only beginning to be examined in much academic research. Pavlenko (Reference Pavlenko2005) notes that much North American research on the emotional connections between individuals and their languages has, thus far, been severely limited. She proposes that it has reflected an unconscious bias towards the assumption that white monolingual middle class speakers learning an L2 in a classroom setting constitute a norm for L2 learning, and that such a ‘norm’ may not necessarily hold for certain immigrant and indigenous populations or for highly mobile persons who routinely participate in multiple language communities.

Indeed, research from a variety of L2 communities in North America has long indicated that speakers’ orientations toward their multiple languages are extraordinarily complex and often belie notions such as a ‘principal’, or linguistically ‘dominant’ language, or unidirectional and inevitable language shift. In an ethnographic study of ten Mexican-origin families living in a small southwestern border community, Valdés (Reference Valdés1996) noted that these Spanish-speaking parents were unanimous in their desire that their young children should learn English, but learning English, like the continued development of Spanish, was but one aspect of learning to follow the rule of respeto at all times, communicating in ways that demonstrate respect for one's self, one's family, and others. Thus, as long as children could follow instructions in Spanish, the use of English among themselves was not forbidden. Learning English was just one aspect, and not necessarily the most important aspect, of growing up. Documenting the situation of five grade-school Puerto Rican/Nuyorican girls in the barrio of Spanish Harlem, New York City, in 1979–80, Zentella noted that they regularly interacted with English monolinguals, Spanish monolinguals, and other speakers using the Spanish-English combinations typical in many such settings. Full bilingualism for children and others remained a deeply-felt aspiration (this researcher noted that ‘Everyone wanted to be able to “speak both”, [but] many factors beyond personal desire militated for and against the bilingual way of life’ (Zentella Reference Zentella1997: 39). More recent research on language socialization across a wide range of Spanish-speaking communities in the US has highlighted multiple points of contrast as well as similarities across national groups, and shown too that there is constant ‘tension between group culture and individual agency, particularly as it refers to conventional stereotypes of Latinos’ (Zentella Reference Zentella and Zentella2005: 10).

Some intriguing recent work on adult bilingual immigrants to Canada (Cervatiuc Reference Cervatiuc2009), native speakers of Chinese or Russian, suggests that, rather than seeing one's L1as a constant, immutable foundation of personal identity, these immigrants instead incorporated their home language identity and earlier experiences into a new and dynamic identity of successful, multilingual professionals. They generated internal dialogs of personal reassurance based on the belief that their relative professional success, often attained after years of less than satisfying employment, exemplified a novel, innovative identity: one that would not have been available to them had they remained in their home country, and one that was similarly unavailable to the monolingual native speakers of English with whom they regularly interacted. Such beliefs served as a bulwark against the social marginalization they sometimes felt and inspired the confidence to continue to make efforts to interact in English.

If the experiences of bilinguals whose languages are both standard languages associated with current nation-states are varied, those of other bilinguals (one of whose codes is a native or indigenous language) are even more so. Considering the situation of youth in indigenous communities in the US Southwest, contemporary investigators find that the young people's language experiences are marked by increasing ‘hybridity, pluriliteracies, and translanguaging’ (McCarty et al. Reference McCarty, Romero-Little, Warhol and Zepeda2009: 299) and point out that the agency of young community members challenges any kind of single-category classification scheme. Furthermore, some (but not all) indigenous language communities enable young speakers to participate in cultural activities that do not require an extensive linguistic script, at least initially. Nicholas (Reference Nicholas2009) shows how contemporary young Hopi adults maintain and build affective connections to their community through taking part in ceremonial corn-planting by hand, baby-naming ceremonies, and group singing that accompanies other religious rituals, all observances where one's physical presence and respectful spectatorship builds the emotional bonds that may later support the acquisition of active use of the Hopi language. While these young people aspired to learn Hopi, they felt well integrated into their communities even without having mastered the language. Ceremonial occasions, either traditional or contemporary, can serve as incentives for language practice and revitalization for those not yet fluent, as they have for the young adults competing to represent the best of Navajo young womanhood in an annual pageant (Luther Reference Luther2007). Thus, the situation of indigenous youth challenges the notion that high proficiency in a ‘first’ or ‘home’ language different from English is a necessary preliminary for psychological security and social efficacy; it is equally possible that the sense of belonging created by these attributes promotes willingness to revive, learn, and use the indigenous tongue.

The linguistic ideologies surrounding immigrant students in US schools can be equally complex, and simultaneously reflect national and other social divisions in countries of origin as well as the often substantial geographic and cultural ignorance of their North American teachers and classmates. The extraordinary diversity of types of Spanish-speaking communities in the US, which can include thousands of native-born citizens as well as persons of ‘Mexican, Salvadoran, Guatemalan, Puerto Rican, Dominican, and Cuban backgrounds . . . contests homogeneous views of Latino culture’ as well as language; members of such communities often demonstrate ‘contradictory views toward the role of schools in maintaining Spanish’ (Zentella Reference Zentella and Zentella2005: 3). In Goulah's (Reference Goulah2009) case study of young people from Former Soviet Union (FSU) countries in a school district in western New York State, students from Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Russia were all seen as ‘Russians’, and all considered inferior, at least with respect to linguistic and cultural knowledge, to their native English-speaking age peers. Within their own groups, however, they expressed clearly understood notions of the superiority of certain FSU groups over others for national or religious reasons: while perceived simply as Russians by most mainstream members of the school communities, and self-identifying as Russian in many contexts because this term was known to most Americans, the young immigrants also articulated within-group hierarchies in which ‘Russian’ ranked higher than, for example, ‘Ukrainian’ (a group with which they were often combined in comments by outsiders), and secular speakers of Russian were perceived more positively than religious (Pentecostal) speakers of Russian who had tended to come from rural areas in their country of origin. Thus orientations and ideologies external and internal to their own communities framed their personal identities in ways that may have influenced their opportunities to develop their interactional capabilities and thus their linguistic repertoires.

Hence, the perspective that an L1 is a consistent refuge and remains so over the life course varies substantially with the individual lived experience of developing bilingualism and the social and material conditions that surround this process. Children can ‘go in and out of bilingualism in a very short time’, Grosjean remarks (2010: 171), depending on the need they have for a language. Linguistic demands result from communicative requirements at home, with caretakers, with friends, at school, or at play. The frequency and purposes of continued demands for language abilities will determine whether children persist in the use of a language. The nature of the meanings developed and retained in a first or other language are shaped by individual experiences, and individual differences within any social unit, whether nuclear or extended family, neighborhood or church group, or geographically distinctive unit of speakers, can vary along many axes.

3. Language as resistance

Does the use of a language other than the mainstream code (English, in most cases, in the US) show resistance to any kind of official authority, in school or elsewhere? Here I deal with social-psychological resistance, not armed conflict. It should never be forgotten, nonetheless, that goals of military conquest and colonization have regularly included the sudden, involuntary, and even brutal imposition of an alien language (and sometimes a different orthography) on those conquered, often along with prohibition and even active suppression of pre-existing languages and scripts. In the US, this has most often applied to restriction of indigenous languages (see, for example, Child Reference Child1998; Yamamoto & Zepeda Reference Yamamoto, Zepeda, Finegan and Rickford2004; Romero-Little & McCarty Reference Romero-Little and McCarty2006). Even when a language has been adapted to serve specialized national purposes, like Navajo and some other Indian languages in World War II (Kawano Reference Kawano1990; McCarty Reference McCarty2002), such a crucial contribution does not cancel out the collective memory of language repression and persecution, a memory still salient for many of the Navajo-dominant grandparents and parents of youngsters and young adults now establishing linguistic repertoires and consolidating identities. Situations wholly or partly similar resulting from conflicts and colonization can be found in many parts of the world and have left legacies of inconsistency with respect to the roles of many home languages in educational language policies (Dutcher Reference Dutcher2004). Many societies (not only Anglophone) are characterized by ‘deeply help beliefs . . . that link language to patriotism and loyalty’; in such contexts, ‘continued and especially public use of minority languages can be construed as disloyalty to the new homeland’ (Lo Bianco Reference Lo Bianco2008: 163). Motivation for language choice is multiply determined, both within and outside schools. Monolingual speakers continue to use the only language they know because they have no other; in such instances, using their sole language represents not resistance, but survival. Indeed, in Valdés's (Reference Valdés1996) ethnographic portrait of language in a Texas/New Mexico border community, even long-term Chicano residents who were far stronger in English made regular and strenuous efforts to accommodate new arrivals who spoke only Spanish. While many such residents could understand a great deal of Spanish, their ability to speak it was limited, but they drew on it regularly to interact with those who had just come from Mexico. Critical language theorists (Tollefson Reference Tollefson and Ricento2006) suggest that if bilingual or bidialectal speakers use a language different from the surrounding linguistic context or from the officially-designated language expected in classrooms, they may be signaling a connection with an alternative social system that enables them to mark boundaries and participate in the covert prestige associated with a different language or non-standard language form. The concept of ‘resistance’ may thus illuminate interactional choices and attitudes in bilingual or bi-dialectal situations. Winer (Reference Winer2007) describes some of the complexities related to choice of instructional language in Quebec, where student teachers of ESL found that Francophone students and sometimes even teachers criticized the use of English for instruction, even in schools where parents endorsed the instrumental value of English. Use of African American Vernacular English may provide covert prestige to its speakers in settings such as classrooms that exert pressure toward the use of standard English (Baugh Reference Baugh2000). One recent study demonstrated how students skilled in both standard and African American English exploited the differences in responding to a grammar correction activity required in their high school English class (Godley, Carpenter & Werner Reference Godley, Carpenter and Werner2007).

Determination of resistance in classroom or other settings is not always so clear-cut; it can be subtle. Resistance may include a reluctance to use the designated language of instruction, if such use runs counter to status distinctions outside the school or age-related norms of solidarity, as in the case of the English-proficient bilingual students in Spanish-English dual immersion programs studied by Freeman (Reference Freeman1998) and Potowski (Reference Potowski2007). In both programs, even students who could understand Spanish quite well did not always use it readily. Guardado's (Reference Guardado2009) observations about language use in a Canadian Scout troop that enrolled youngsters between 10 and 18 led by Spanish-speaking leaders, a professional couple who had been scouts while growing up in Guatemala, suggest that interactions in the troop, meant to provide a voluntary context for the natural use of Spanish during activities such as nature hikes and the learning of scouting rules and values enshrined in, for example, the Scout promise, inadvertently reproduced the hegemony of English. Nevertheless, adults’ insistence on articulating and imposing a Spanish-only rule for all troop activities, generally followed by the children when adults were present, showed ‘agency through the process of appropriation, which became a strategy of resistance’ (2009: 120) in the network of the scout troop.

Resistance to the linguistic demands of instruction can also include non-verbal communicative behavior that enables speakers simply to survive moments of potential difficulty by navigating language differences strategically without engaging in extensive use of any verbal language at all. Such behaviors, subsumed by the term ‘passing’ (that is, passing for fluent English speakers) are the focus of a study by Monzó & Rueda (Reference Monzó and Rueda2009) in their study of Latino fifth-grade children in Los Angeles, all more proficient in Spanish than English, who were trying to get along in a classroom where very little Spanish was used. The investigators found that, rather than asking for clarification in Spanish or seeking other forms of academic support, these young learners would often simply avoid academic tasks, distract peers or teachers, or complete assignments with anything at all that would give the appearance of doing seatwork adequately without actually grasping content. Their behavior showed they were ‘resisting’ being seen as having relatively weaker English skills; this resistance often precluded seeking and receiving clarification in Spanish, and thus did not help them succeed in academic activities. The willingness to act as if one understands can, in some circumstances, allow a learner to interact with others long enough to continue to get input and keep participating in ongoing activities that will support their developing comprehension. Indeed, the successful kindergarten/Grade 1 learners in Wong Fillmore's classic Reference Wong Fillmore, Fillmore, Kempler and Wang1979 study regularly evinced this approach (‘Join a group and act as if you understand what's going on, even if you don't.’ 1979: 209), a key social strategy in their relatively rapid acquisition of English. However, for school-age L2 learners much beyond first grade, acting as if one understands can become more difficult as the curriculum becomes more challenging and classroom instruction (unless specially adapted through approaches such as content-based or sheltered instruction) less likely to be supported by multiple comprehension supports, including hands-on activities and specialized language support from teachers and/or peers. Hence, it is not surprising that ‘passing’, a productive learning strategy for early primary learners, could also come to function as an obstacle to academic progress for the fifth-graders studied by Monzó & Rueda. It is also notable that the successful adult bilinguals whose experiences were recounted by Cervatiuc (Reference Cervatiuc2009) found ways to interact with native speakers of English in informal settings such as coffee shops, malls, children's playgrounds, bookstores, and sports clubs where they could ‘impose reception’ (2009: 262) with no agenda other than L2 practice. Similarly, a high-school-age native speaker of Chinese, one of the less successful adolescent learners of English over a five-year period studied by other researchers, avoided a sense of failure by skipping classes where he was struggling; insecure about ways to ask for help from peers, teachers, or other adults, he simply withdrew from academically competitive classes (Suárez-Orozco, Suárez-Orozco & Todorova Reference Suárez-Orozco, Suárez-Orozco and Todorova2008: 191). Despite having strong mathematical skills, this learner's insecurities about both English and social relationships led to increasing disengagement from school.

Yet the designation of any behavior as evidence of resistance has at least two faces, one based on a speaker's internal motivations and another based on the evaluation of speech behavior by outsiders. Goulah's (Reference Goulah2009) concepts of speaker-internal and speaker-external views of identity, or locus of judgment in interrogating terms for ethnic identification chosen by and ascribed to Russian-speaking adolescents from the FSU, are equally relevant to any judgments about forms of resistance applicable to potentially bilingual speakers in situations where two languages might or might not be used. When outsiders are not themselves bilingual, spurious judgments of resistance can be made that are projections of their own discomfort at being in the presence of another language. The moral evaluations associated with the use of one language or another can serve as clues to group status in intergroup relations. The central role of the language-related beliefs, or ideologies, held by monolingual and bilingual speakers has come to assume ever greater importance in many situations in the US, where anti-immigrant pronouncements have become ever more strident. It is essential to recognize that there is substantial internal variation in language ideologies for both monolingual and bilingual speakers. Neither group is monolithic, and ideologies and practices typically diverge for both groups. With respect to language minority communities, investigators have pointed out that the attitudes of parents and children in bilingual communities cannot be assumed to be similar; most studies of language attitudes have focused on parental preferences, but the language ideologies of children and young people are equally crucial, although under-researched (Relano Pastor Reference Relaño Pastor and Zentella2005). Indeed, the attitudes of school-age bilingual speakers are a vital piece of the total picture and may ultimately be even more crucial than their parents' stances in signaling the directions of motivation for retaining and refining a language other than English in US schools. Furthermore, language attitudes are not fixed, but malleable across situations and different stages in the course of an individual life; like assessments of proficiency levels, evaluations and attitudes about the languages one may know and use can reflect the ‘waxing and waning of languages’; attitudes too are also caught up in ‘a dynamic process’ (Grosjean Reference Grosjean2010: 85) sensitive to changes occurring in individual lives over time.

Communities also change over time, within themselves and with respect to relationships with other groups with which they share temporal and geographic space. Recent research in social psychology has provided much insight into the relative effect of belonging to majority-versus minority-language communities on language learning motivation. One of the key insights contributed by social psychology to language teaching in the last two decades is that the context of reception for immigrant groups – and presumably for other L2 communities who find themselves in contact with far larger communities – has different effects on conditions for all forms of adaptation, including L2 learning. The contexts surrounding language learners can influence both motivation and conditions for language learning in a positive, neutral, or negative fashion. Some further revealing examples come from research done with Anglophone and Francophone college students using their L2 (French or English respectively) at an officially bilingual university in Ottawa, Canada (Rubenfeld et al. Reference Rubenfeld, Clément, Lussier, Lebrun and Auger2006). Using path analysis based on self-report surveys, researchers examined the relationships between contact with the L2, confidence in one's control of the L2, individual identity, and representations of the L2 community. For both groups, they found that the experience of using the L2 led to more positive representations of the other group. Interestingly, however, the process by which this occurred differed for members of the majority Anglophone and for the minority Francophone participants. For the latter, the strength of L1 identity seemed to establish a foundation for the confidence to use an L2; this connection was not found for the Anglophone participants. The researchers conclude that either contact with or confidence in an L2 can promote identification with the L2 community, and such identification might, in turn, promote positive intergroup relations.

Thus, the perception that any use of a particular language or variety of a language constitutes a form of social-psychological resistance is extraordinarily complicated, invariably reflecting a host of variables related to differing social positions and power relationships, only some of which may be identified explicitly, and can be determined only situationally. Furthermore, different observers and researchers may well draw different conclusions, especially if they do not know one of the languages or varieties at issue and are unfamiliar with specific community language profiles, norms, and expectations.

4. Language as resource

Perhaps the most widely discussed aspect of a language other than one's native language is the concept that such a language can serve as a resource. This is a concept that has also attracted a great deal of attention in a fast-changing, globalizing, late capitalist world scene. In 1984, Ruíz observed that a language-as-resource orientation could have several advantages, among them the enhancement of the status of subordinate languages and reduced tensions between minority and majority communities (1984: 25–26). Have the intervening years borne out the promise of this orientation? There are many possible answers, affirmative, neutral, and negative, depending on particular languages in specific contexts and also on the dimensions of individual and communal experience. Judgments are complicated by a growing awareness that, particularly in the last two decades, a ‘resource’ orientation has all too often been understood in a narrowly technical, deterministic sense. This happens in one of two ways. Either language is linked to human capital arguments, in which skills and proficiencies of all sorts are valorized because of their putative links to higher incomes; or language mastery is seen as a strategic tool, part of the security tactics required for espionage and even aggressive actions, a position that raises fundamental questions about the basic levels of trust required for communication (Lo Bianco Reference Lo Bianco2008).

The effect of economic instrumentalism on instructional language choices has been studied directly for Spanish in the US and more indirectly for French in Canada. In a study of textbooks aimed at university-level heritage-language speakers of Spanish between 1970 and 2000, Leeman & Martínez (Reference Leeman and Martinez2007) show that, in the last three decades, efforts to present and represent some of the local variation in forms of Spanish used in the US have decreased, while, since the 1990s, the emphasis on refining the uses of Spanish thought necessary to participate in international, globalized Spanish has increased. This emphasis actually narrows both the aims of and the justification for additional language skills, and eliminates the attention given to dialect varieties that appeared in earlier teaching materials. This, in turn, prioritizes a homogenized form of Spanish that does not correspond to dialectal variation found in Spanish-speaking communities around the US, rendering local variation relatively invisible pedagogically. An absence of local and even regional curricular content can also create curricular gaps. Chapelle (Reference Chapelle2009) has documented the extreme paucity of any content related to Québécois French in the instructional materials used in postsecondary French classrooms in the northern US, despite this region's history of substantial Francophone presence throughout the nineteenth and into the early twentieth centuries. Also related to Canadian French, the governmental rationale presented for language maintenance and retention has shifted from emphasis on use of the language for honoring and celebrating local traditions to its role in equipping individuals to participate in globalized employment that could include, for example, call centers operated in French (da Silva & Heller Reference da Silva and Heller2009).

Can mastery of a language other than English serve as a resource at work? Yes. Does it always? Context is all; it depends. In North American settings, particularly in the US, the emphasis has been on lack of English skills as a barrier to employment. Far less attention has been paid to the uses of other languages by bilingual workers, especially professionals. In a small study of three successful Mexican-origin Spanish–English professionals working in the US, McGroarty & Urzúa (Reference McGroarty, Urzúa, Brinton, Kagan and Bauckus2008) documented three different personal histories with respect to how the use of Spanish along with English had contributed to occupational success and continued professional employment. While all the informants continued to demonstrate positive attitudes towards Spanish, there was considerable variation in their frequency of use (from daily to occasionally, depending on their work contexts) and in the degree to which it coincided with self-identification as a bicultural person. (Indeed, bilingualism does not automatically produce biculturalism, even when individuals control two languages well; see Grosjean Reference Grosjean2010). While exclusive emphasis on higher incomes as the justification for language study can be restrictive, it must be noted that it is not clear, nor has it ever been, that fluency in a language other than that used in the mainstream has necessarily led, in the past or present, to improved economic outcomes. It may or may not, depending on the relevant social and economic opportunity structures, including the existence of ethnic enclaves (Portes & Rumbaut Reference Portes and Rumbaut1990; Zhou Reference Zhou1992).

Among other critiques of resource-oriented arguments, Ricento (Reference Ricento2005) notes that an overly instrumental focus delinks language from the full range of attributes implicated in human identity. The malleable and multivalent links between language learning and identity have received increasing attention in the last fifteen years (Norton Reference Norton1997; McGroarty Reference McGroarty1998; Edwards Reference Edwards2009), and commentators invariably note that the multifaceted nature of personal identity may or may not be implicated in language acquisition (Norton & Toohey Reference Norton and Toohey2001). Wiley (Reference Wiley2007) further remarks that looking to heritage-language speakers as solutions for the extreme limitations of current US language capabilities raises several additional issues, including the dominant ‘monolingualist’ ideology of instruction and the strong possibility that community uses of a language may or may not correspond to the formal, literate standard generally taught in schools, an issue particularly acute for American indigenous languages but not limited only to them. Like Valdés (Reference Valdés, Peyton, Ranard and McGinnis2001), he observes that the ‘four skills’ model of language instruction and use most often enshrined in formal instructional curricula does not necessarily fit either the experience or the goals of learners who have personal histories of family and community use of languages acquired through experience of using them as a regular part of valued activities. Family histories and community language ethnographies offer vital insights into well developed ideas regarding the types of language skills needed for life, not just for school. Chávez's (Reference Chávez2007) account of five generations of a Hispanic family in the Los Angeles area shows that attitudes related to maintenance and use of Spanish, the importance of English, and interest in formal education (available only in English) also varied according to age, gender, and occupational roles and individual characteristics and interests. Farr (Reference Farr2006, Reference Farr, Farr, Seloni and Song2010) provides abundant evidence that the Mexican ranchero migrants who moved regularly between Chicago and their ranchos in rural Michoacán esteemed verbal skills and expected competent adults to know how to realize the uses of franqueza, respeto, and relajo – directness, respect, and playfulness in Spanish – whether or not they had had lengthy schooling. Formal education was seen as appropriate for the acquisition of literacy in Spanish and English, but it was neither the optimal nor the sole route to acquisition of the oral communicative genres highly valued within the community. It is clear that, in some language communities – and this could apply to communities using majority or minority languages or varieties – the types of language mastery associated with advanced academic rewards are not necessarily those most highly prized.

Accordingly, to view schools as the sole site for valorization of linguistic skills underrepresents current research on the other institutions that provide active support for other uses of language, particularly but not only in non-majority languages. A complete picture of language diversity requires such recognition, but raises multiple questions for educators who have generally been slow to recognize the impact of community contexts and out-of-school activities and incentives on many forms of learning (Heath Reference Heath, Tannen and Alatis2003). Case studies and ethnographic inquiry in a number of North American settings indicate that, where youngsters witness and participate in regular uses of non-majority languages in community settings, they may then begin to develop and maintain age-appropriate uses of such languages, and such learning may take place before school entry or outside school. Chinese parents whose children were enrolled in the first or second year of a French early immersion program in Western Canada were committed to children's acquisition of English and French literacy in school, but also wanted their children to appreciate and develop Chinese abilities, including control of literacy. They therefore made strenuous efforts to expose their children to uses of Chinese, including hearing stories from grandparents and other elders, at home and during events such as church services and community celebrations, and also devoted much time at home to direct teaching of ideographs (Dagenais & Moore Reference Dagenais and Moore2008).

A twenty-first century view of resources benefits from a separate consideration of the opportunities provided by public agencies such as schools, and the opportunities sought out by individuals and families on their own initiative. In the US at present, numerous public education programs exist that incorporate contemporary and more expansive orientations to language as a resource (that is, one not limited to language ability as a path to economic gain). Longitudinal research on high quality programs that offer the requisite depth, breadth, and duration of instruction in two languages has shown robust evidence of positive learning outcomes and favorable attitudes on the part of participants, and demonstrated that opportunities to enroll in such programs are often highly sought after by parents eager to give their children educational advantages. Indicators related to quality of instruction for educational programs overall are just as applicable to heritage language (Bale Reference Bale2010) and dual language programs (Brisk Reference Brisk1998; Lindholm-Leary Reference Lindholm-Leary2001); such programs face the additional, often formidable, task of providing an environment where the value of skills in non-majority languages is honored, recognized, and developed. In the Spanish-English magnet school studied by Potowski (Reference Potowski2007), graduates who might not otherwise have had incentives to form identities as skilled speakers of Spanish developed ‘respectable levels of Spanish proficiency and investment in the language’, along with ‘positive attitudes toward Spanish’ through their long-term involvement in the school's ‘affirmative environment for heritage speakers’ (2007: 201). Asked why they had chosen dual-language instruction, either Chinese-English or Spanish-English, for their young children, parents in the San Francisco area gave a variety of responses reflecting the aspirations they held for their children to receive high quality education, affirm family experience or heritage, be exposed to a language the parents might not know themselves, and thus reach beyond the boundaries of a single language to become capable of interactions that would open doors to future opportunities, including but not limited to the possibility of better jobs (Jarmel & Schneider Reference Jarmel and Schneider2009).

In school and outside, new technologies have been pressed into service to support language learning, maintenance, and development. Because such efforts are not organized, monitored, and evaluated in the same way as school instruction, it has, to date, been difficult to get a sense of their overall impact on successful language learning. However, widespread use of new technologies offers additional evidence that many language learners are eagerly employing these new avenues of learning and practice. Many novel technologies, particularly social networking sites, have enabled prospective learners of an L2 to seek out new forms of language exposure and practice in their own time and in ways that fit their lives. Such efforts are testimony to learners’ beliefs that the acquisition and development of skills in an additional language are valuable, for economic or other reasons. Among those wishing to exploit these skills are business people and travelers who do not have time for formal study in educational institutions; they appreciate the access to exposure, interaction, and instruction in additional languages available to them on an as-needed basis through electronic networks and peer-study sites (Eisenberg Reference Eisenberg2008). Furthermore, the use of technologies, some traditional and some more innovative, that allow not only individuals but families to experience language use at times and in places of their own choosing also holds promise for language revitalization. A recent program devoted to increasing the level of young parents’ comfort with the idea of including Welsh in the upbringing of their young children provided children's storybooks and CDs for listening, to enable families to provide bedtime stories in Welsh even when they themselves did not always use that language regularly (Edwards & Newcombe Reference Edwards and Newcombe2005). This is an intriguing instance of the power of new technologies to alter and expand language environments accessible to potential learners.