ABSTRACT
This chapter examines East Asian community-based heritage language programs’ contributions to immigrant descendants’ and transnational students’ engagement in cross-cultural and multilingual literacies in the United States. Transnationalism, language socialization, and sociocultural perspectives of identity construction provide theoretical foundations of this review. Community-based heritage language programs create authentic language socialization opportunities for immigrant descendants and transnational students to learn culturally appropriate ways to communicate with members of their ethnolinguistic communities. Participation in community-based heritage language schools can contribute to immigrant descendants’ emerging sense of self in relation to their ethnolinguistic groups. The hegemony of English may create challenges for heritage language schools’ efforts to support immigrant descendants’ and transnational students’ heritage language learning. Heritage language programs can offer possibilities to promote and strengthen linguistic and cultural diversity in the United States. Addressing the challenges that community-based heritage language programs face may require further collaboration with professional and research communities.
