An Analysis Of Heritage Languages And Bilingualism

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Topic: I am studying about heritage languages and bilingualism because I want to find out how one’s language shapes his or her identity in an increasingly globalized society in order to understand why there is still a fear among many immigrants and their descendants of teaching their children their heritage language. Based on the science and research done on bilingualism, learning a heritage or second language while growing up has minimal to no adverse affects on language development and social class. Rather, language presents an opportunity to elevate one’s culture, personality, and identity. For America, heritage and second language education is vital to sustaining its worldwide influence as the world becomes more globalized.

Coca-Cola. “Coca-Cola – It’s Beautiful – Official :60.” YouTube. YouTube, 2 February
2014. Web. 2 February 2014.
The main claim of this Coca-Cola commercial is that every American, regardless of ethnicity, religion, and sexuality, enjoys drinking Coca-Cola and so the audience should as well. The sub-claim here is that America is a nation consisting of diverse individuals with backgrounds stemming from around the world. The grounds for this sub-claim are the various scenes in which a variety of Americans are depicted enjoying the freedoms of America with “America the Beautiful” being sung in multiple languages in the background. This Coca-Cola commercial appeals to the pathos of the American audience with the incorporation of the iconic, patriotic song and the breadth of minorities represented in the video. The multilingual singing of the song had to be a deliberate choice since Coca-Cola could have very easily shown the same clips of the diverse Americans with the English version. This implies that Coca-Co...

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... child’s life may simply lead to greater psychological difficulties because of the child’s overwhelming feeling of abandonment. I intend to juxtapose these two pieces in my paper. De Houwer’s article coincides the most with Landau’s in that both agree bilingualism does not create any significant child development issues and that the benefits outweigh the costs. The language used in this article is intended for a general audience, which can promote discussions and questions. As for the credibility of de Houwer, she is currently Professor of Language Acquisition and Language Teaching at the University of Erfurt in Germany, and she is heavily involved with multiple linguistics organizations. At the time of this article’s writing, she taught at the University of Antwerp and Science Foundation of Flanders, Belgium. Therefore, this is clearly a scholarly, credible source.

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