SOCIETAL FACTORS IN THE ACQUISITION OF PORTUGUESE AS A HERITAGE LANGUAGE

Abstract

Throughout the years, one professor collected students’ anecdotal accounts that during professional interviews with possible employers, students reported employers signaled using the future of subjunctive (FS) as a marker for a high proficiency level. Throughout the years, (non-empirical) classroom observations and students’ anecdotal accounts led the investigators to hypothesize if sociocultural factors could explain why some heritage speakers (HS) would develop FS more easily than other students. The present study was conducted in a small Portuguese program with heritage speakers of Portuguese at the university level. To evaluate these students’ production this study used three types of assessments: an oral interview and a written task (conducted by the instructor to establish the participant's proficiency level), and a written self-reported sociolinguistic questionnaire. The study used content qualitative analysis to examine if there were biographical circumstances in the history of participants' Portuguese acquisition that could explain the easier development of that grammatical feature.The proposed discussion here is to understand the relationship between Heritage Language (HL) acquisition and input/output opportunities, as well as how sociocultural factors contribute to speakers’ variance (Armon-Lotem et al. 80). This study reaffirmed that the roles of the home, school, and community should be valued and taken into consideration when discussing HL development (Park et al 224-230). This study especially observed that the participants with better performances had ample language exposure in the early years, such as being sequential bilingual, and both caregivers speaking Portuguese at home. A noteworthy conclusion of this study is that further research should consider the role of literacy as an important factor in complex grammatical features in HL acquisition (Schwartz 410). This study collected and analyzed data on Portuguese college-level HLL aiming to understand the circumstances enabling them to maintain and develop their HL at higher proficiency levels. The results may help researchers, teachers, and the broader community to expand the discussion of the societal factors affecting HL acquisition and understand the HL acquisition of Portuguese in the U.S. context.