Module 3: Glossary

I. Communication: two-way process of reaching mutual understanding, in which participants not only exchange (encode-decode) information, ideas, and feelings but also create and share meaning (Department of linguistics, 2011).

II. Heritage language: languages other than the dominant language (or languages) in a given social context (Kelleher, 2010).

III. Immigrant heritage languages: any of the languages spoken by immigrants arriving in the United States after it became an independent country (Kelleher, 2010).

IV. L1: a person’s first language (see L2) (Lightbown & Spada, 2006)

V. L2: a person’s second language. It refers to any language learning or use after the first language has been learned (Lightbown & Spada, 2006).

VI. Language acquisition: an individual’s developing knowledge of the target language (Lightbown & Spada, 2006).

VII. Language attrition: loss of specific language skills of an individual speaker (de Jong, 2011, p.256).

VIII. Language loss:  loss of a first or second language or a portion of that language. Also called         language attrition (de Jong, 2011, p.256).

IX. Language maintenance: “the continuing use of a language in the face of competition from a regionally and socially powerful or numerically stronger language” (Mesthrie as cited in Donghui, 2010, p.43)

X. Linguistic shift: the replacement of one language by another as the primary means of communication and socialization within a community (Mesthrie, Swann, Deumert, & Leap, 2001, p. 253).

XI. Linguistic domains: “institutionally relevant spheres of social interaction in which certain value clusters are behaviorally implemented” (Fishman as cited in Stoessel, 2002, p.201).