ABSTRACT
There is increasing criticism of Spanish language departments, and heritage language (HL) instruction in particular, for positioning the linguistic practices of Spanish heritage
speakers as inferior to those of monolinguals and second language learners (Gutiérrez & Fairclough, 2006; Leeman, 2005, 2014; Valdés, González, García, & Márquez, 2003; Villa, 2002). Current approaches to HL teaching have moved beyond ‘linguistic substitution,’ which aimed to replace ‘non-standard’ features of students’ language with ‘correct’ Spanish, toward an ‘expansion-based’ approach, in which ‘Standard Spanish’ is taught as a second dialect (Valdés, 1981). Leeman (2005) argues that both of these objectives can lead instructors to position an abstract ‘standard’ variety as superior, thus delegitimizing the home linguistic practices of the students. While the development of additional pedagogical approaches is needed to address dominant language hierarchies, it is also important to understand how HL instructors use language in the classroom to represent discourses about the value of different types of language use. In particular, there is a need for research that examines the ways in which HL instructors index social dispositions, or ‘stances’ toward different ways of using language through their linguistic and interactional practices in the classroom.
