REVIEW article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Psychology of Language
This article is part of the Research TopicSocial and Affective Domain in Home Language Development and Maintenance Research Volume IIView all 18 articles
Heritage Language Maintenance in the Inner Circle: A scoping review of Chinese and its varieties
Provisionally accepted
- 1University of Tasmania, Hobart, Australia
- 2The University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia
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Studies on heritage language have emerged from second language acquisition studies in recent decades. Researchers have become increasingly interested in attitudes, practices and challenges toward heritage language maintenance. This study examines this domain with a focus on Chinese and its varieties in Inner Circle countries, which include United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand. This study follows research synthesis framework of a scoping review, systematically searching and examining research contexts, focused population, research trend, and the use of the term "Chinese" in existing empirical research in heritage language maintenance domain. Through a systematic search of six databases, 28 empirical studies (all journal articles) were included in this review for meeting eligibility criteria. Two reviewers along with the author individually screened and coded this sample using the coding scheme modified for this review, then cross-checked coding . Frequencies and percentages of quantitative data were then calculated, followed by the examination of qualitative data. Among other results, this study revealed a keen research interest in home, community and/or heritage language school context compared to formal governmental school settings across Inner Circle countries. The imprecise use of the term "Chinese" in the sample of this study also indicated the evident "Chinese equals Mandarin" discourse and conflation of people's multifaceted cultural and linguistic identities. This review attempts to depict this growing domain by highlighting research trends in Inner Circle countries, identifying research gaps, and pointing potentially fruitful directions for future research.
Keywords: Chinese languages, Heritage language maintenance, Inner Circle, research synthesis, Scoping review
Received: 05 Oct 2025; Accepted: 11 Dec 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Song, Hennebry-Leung and Bown. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Xinrui Song
Mairin Hennebry-Leung
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