Historical heritage language ego-documents: From home, from away, and from below

Abstract

Abstract Recent research into heritage languages has shown the results of language contact structurally and socially. This work is almost exclusively synchronic. This special issue presents five papers that look at the historical record of language contact in migration contexts. In using ego-documents written by everyday users of the languages in contact, we uncover the usefulness of incorporating historical sociolinguistic analysis into heritage language research.