“Being myself in Spanish”
A heritage speaker’s evolving pragmatic choices and awareness during study abroad
This case study examines the pragmatic development of address forms of a US-based Spanish heritage speaker of
Mexican descent, Juan, during an 11-week abroad program in Argentina. Instruments included a background questionnaire, a
pre/post-written elicitation task, four interviews, and 16 naturalistic recordings during host family dinners and service
encounters. Findings indicate that Juan decreased his use of vos on elicitation tasks and did not use
vos at all in naturalistic recordings. There was an increase, however, in his metapragmatic awareness, or his
understanding of the ways variable forms index social meaning, specifically regarding address forms. These results were related to
Juan’s bicultural identity construction, investment, and evolving withdrawal from or participation in the host community. This
study highlights the importance of triangulating elicited and naturalistic data with qualitative information and moving away from
appropriate-based models that compare heritage speakers’ pragmatic choices to those of monolingual native speakers.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.Background
- 2.1Heritage speaker identity and SA
- 2.2Investment and SA
- 2.3Problematizing pragmatic research on heritage speakers of Spanish
- 2.4Forms of address and voseo
- 3.Methodology
- 3.1Participant
- 3.2Context
- 3.3Explicit instruction of vos
- 3.4Materials and procedures
- 3.5Analysis
- 4.Case study
- 4.1“Being myself in Spanish”
- 4.2DCT analysis
- 4.3Naturalistic data analysis
- 5.Discussion
- 5.1Juan’s address form choices and metapragmatic awareness
- 5.2Implications and contributions
- 6.Conclusions
- Notes
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References