One key type of institutional support factor is whether education is available in the minority language and if so, what kind of education. Does the public school system offer bilingual or dual immersion programs? Or are classes in the minority language limited to a few hours a week, available only in upper grades, or are they not offered at all (except perhaps by the local community in evening classes or weekend schools)? As we explore in Chapter 9, the importance of minority language literacy and education in promoting language maintenance is one reason why researchers call for more Spanish language educational opportunities (e.g. Valdés, 2015).
Of course, the three types of factors outlined by Giles et al. (1977) are not independent of each other. Demographic and status factors clearly play a role in the availability of institutional support: when there are a large number of speakers of a minority language concentrated in a particular area it is easier to establish community media and religious institutions (or get existing institutions to offer programming) in that language. Similarly, policies requiring local and national governments to provide services or materials in minority languages are sometimes contingent on the number or percentage of speakers in a particular area. For example, in the US, the Voting Rights Act only requires that minority language electoral materials be available in districts where a certain percentage of the population speak that language and have limited English-speaking ability (see Chapter 8).
There have been several critiques of the ethnolinguistic vitality model. For one, the various factors are difficult to measure. Moreover, no single factor is sufficient to explain patterns of language maintenance and loss, and it is not clear which ones should be considered most important, making the model extremely difficult to test (Husband & Khan, 1982). In addition, the model focuses only on the characteristics of minority groups, thus failing to take the power and practices of dominant groups into account (Tollefson, 1991). Further, societal ideologies about languages in general, rather than a specific language or ethnolinguistic group, can also have an impact on vitality. For example, the notion that monolingualism is the norm, and that multilingualism is divisive, can have an impact on patterns of language use (Valdés, 2015), just as attitudes towards any specific language can.
Other limitations of the ethnolinguistic vitality model are related to the assumption of a one-to-one relationship between group identity and language. While speaking a minority language is sometimes seen as key to ‘authentic’ group identity, this isn’t always or automatically the case. Think, for example, of various ethnic groups in the US such as Italians and Polish; many people claim these identities despite being monolingual in English. Further, ethnolinguistic groups are not homogenous, and the model fails to consider factors such as social class, age, gender and/or subgroups (Husband & Khan, 1982). This critique is evocative of intersectionality, an analytic construct that we explore in greater depth in Chapter 6. Intersectional approaches stress that people don’t belong to just one identity category (such as gender, class or race) but rather they belong to several different categories at the same time, and their experiences are shaped by the ways in which these categories interact with one another (Crenshaw, 1989). For example, it would be a mistake to lump all Spanish-speakers into a single category without also considering their race, class and gender identities, among others. In fact, in their longitudinal study of the children of immigrants from a variety of countries, Portes and Rumbaut (2001) found that these factors were predictors of language maintenance. A related limitation of the ethnolinguistic vitality model is that it focuses on factors impacting groups and is unable to explain differences among individuals belonging to the same group (Pauwels, 2016). It is likely as a result of these limitations that the ethnolinguistic vitality model doesn’t always result in accurate predictions. In particular, minority languages are sometimes maintained in contexts where the model predicts shift (Velázquez, 2018; Yagmur & Ehala, 2011).
Social networks, family language practices and other individual differences
Because the ethnolinguistic vitality model focuses on factors impacting groups, some scholars have argued that social network theory, with its emphasis on individuals’ relationships within and outside of groups, is better suited for explaining individual-level patterns of language maintenance and use (Pauwels, 2016). The premise of social network approaches to language is that individuals’ patterns of language use derive from the people with whom they interact regularly. Thus, researchers adopting this approach examine individuals’ social relationships and networks. While early research in this area looked at how relationships impacted the use and spread of linguistic features within social networks, subsequent research expanded the focus by looking at how social networks can play a role in patterns of minority language maintenance and shift (e.g. Raschka et al., 2002; Stoessel, 2002).
Two features of social networks that have been the focus of analysis are density and multiplexity. Dense social networks are those networks in which lots of people in the network have ties to each other. Think, for example, of a close group of friends; everyone in the group is friends with each other. In a loose social network, in contrast, individuals have connections not shared by others, as in the case of a group of friends who come together at school or work, but outside of that context interact with a lot of other friends who don’t know each other. Multiplex networks are networks in which people have multiple kinds of ties or relationships – for example, if your sister-in-law is also your colleague and your workout buddy. In the case of minority languages, it makes sense that the more a person uses the language, the more likely they are to maintain it. Thus, minority language speakers in dense, multiplex social networks that use that language are more likely to maintain it. Some research has found the make-up of individuals’ social networks to be a more reliable predictor of language maintenance or shift than socio-economic status or gender (García, 2003; Milroy, 2002; Sallabank, 2010).
In recent years, scholars have noted that increased migration and mobility as well as new technologies make it easier for people to participate in dispersed networks and negotiate their identities transnationally (Coupland, 2003; De Fina & Perrino, 2013; Márquez-Reiter & Martín Rojo, 2014). The social networks of immigrants and their offspring connect them to people and languages in their countries of national origin as well as in the country where they reside, and they also consume media produced for transnational audiences. Increased mobility in recent decades means both that immigrants and their children are more likely to visit their countries of origin, and that they have a greater chance of coming into contact with more recent arrivals. Attending to these trends forces us to recognize that languages and social networks can’t really be mapped onto specific locales, as people are so often on the move and may communicate with people thousands of miles away on a daily basis.
Some researchers have pointed out that in some sense, the decision about whether or not to use a minority language comes down to a series of everyday choices, both conscious and unconscious (Valdés, 2015; Velázquez, 2018). In most cases, even one’s social networks involve some element of choice on the part of the individual. Thus, given that language maintenance depends on intergenerational transmission (Fishman, 1991), researchers have also begun to pay more attention to parents’ and other caretakers’ linguistic decisions and attitudes regarding their children’s minority language maintenance (we discuss family language policy in more depth in Chapter 8). Still, it’s important to stress that household language policies, including both adult and child language practices, don’t take place in a vacuum. Instead, individual language choices are shaped by structural forces and societal ideologies (Grosjean, 1982; Valdés, 2015), and even positive attitudes toward the minority language are not sufficient to ensure maintenance (Velázquez, 2018).
Indeed, while it is crucial for parents and caretakers to understand the factors that can shape children’s language acquisition and use, this doesn’t mean that we should treat intergenerational or family language transmission as something that depends