Abstract
Although the United States does not have an official language, English is the dominant language in the country. Some states have gone so far as to adopt the English language as the official language of the state and have implemented educational policies, such as Proposition 227 in California, to assure that English remains the dominant language. In the United States, children enrolled in the educational system who are English learners are placed in classes requiring them to develop proficiency in the dominant language. During this process, some English learner students are losing proficiency in their first language while developing their second language, English. On the other hand, some students are remaining proficient in their first language while developing their second language, English. Language maintenance and loss has been previously studied on individual students or groups of students at the same school site and in the same context. Within that research, multiple factors have been shown to influence the maintenance and loss of those students’ L1. However, in some families, even though Spanish is considered the L1 of each member, not all members have maintained the language at the same level of proficiency and, at times, the family members are scattered on the language spectrum of their L1. Not much research has involved families and the language identity of each individual member or the sociocultural factors that influence their language identity individually, causing them to either maintain or lose their L1. This research is an autoethnographic/ethnographic qualitative study using personal experiences regarding L1 and L2 development, maintenance, and loss. This research also employed in-depth scripted interviews involving at least two interview sessions (approximately 90 minutes) with each person individually. This study used a sociolinguistic framework to study the influence of a family’s sociocultural factors that influenced the loss or maintenance of their L1 while developing their L2 and their current language identity. If new generation Latino parents, and other non-English speaking families, do not make a concerted effort to foster and encourage home language maintenance, it is very likely that English will become the dominant language of the country within future English learners’ homes. The maintenance of a home language can be a difficult undertaking. Nevertheless, it is clear from this research that maintaining a home language and promoting biliteracy and biculturalism is possible. Bilingual families must make a conscious and intentional decision (from the birth of their child[ren]) to promote, practice, and nurture home language maintenance.