Social and Affective Domain in Home Language Development and Maintenance Research

Multilingualism is a widespread global phenomenon, and it is now increasingly common for people to speak more than one language. Multilingualism provokes situations of language contact because people who speak different languages need to communicate with each other. This leads to language maintenance (language transmission to the next generation) or language shift. Sometimes this shift occurs in the second generation, when parents make a willful choice to stop speaking a heritage language or if a child refuses to speak it. It implies a conscious decision by parents when they decide to educate their child in two languages for various reasons.

Usually, only one language, the dominant one, is learned in a formal school or institutional setting. Language maintenance and transmission are facilitated by the fact that the new generation finds proficiency in these languages advantageous if there are positive associations and if they are reinforced by parents and social networks.
The main goal of this research topic is to bring together scholars working on the most intriguing aspects of home language research, including but not limited to

• Multilingualism;

• Family language policy;

• Digital literacies;

• Digital practices;

• Translanguaging;

• Bilingual families and bilingual socialization;

• Bilingual families and media;

• Education and home language development;

• Bilingual education;

• Multilingual special education, and

• Teachers'; and parents'; perspectives on home language maintenance and development.

We welcome contributions presenting cross-national and cross-cultural comparisons in any of the areas mentioned above.

Keywords: Heritage language Majority language Multilingualism Language maintenance Language transmission

Important Note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.