Principal investigator: Yvonne Lam

Research assistants: Romar Dungo, Mahn Hei Yu

Funding: Social Sciences and Humanities Council of Canada Insight Development Grant ($73,800)

Translanguaging refers to the mixing of elements from two or more languages when you speak (think "Spanglish", "Chinglish", or "franglais"). It is a common and natural practice when multilingual speakers talk to each other. This project looks at how beliefs and ideologies about translanguaging influence the way multilingual speakers evaluate their language competence and construct their identities. We focus on the children of immigrants, known as heritage speakers, who often feel insecure about their proficiency in the home language because of fewer opportunities to use it than the majority language. Their insecurity is made worse when others criticize them for mixing languages, which is often considered to reflect a lack of fluency. As language is an essential part of one's identity, it is important to address the misperception that heritage speakers are linguistically deficient.