Some considerations on the emotions of heritage language learners, teachers, and users

This special issue is both timely and perfectly placed. Interest in heritage language (HL) learning has been growing for a while (Driver, 2022), as has the interest in the emotions of language learners and users (Dewaele & MacIntyre, 2014). By bringing these two strands together, the guest editors have created a powerful research synergy. Just as François Grosjean (1989) famously declared that bilinguals are not the sum of two complete or incomplete monolinguals but have a unique configuration, I would argue that research on the emotions of HL learners, teachers, and users in general can generate unique findings and insights that go beyond the original boundaries. The research presented in this special issue also benefited from recent theoretical, ontological, epistemological, and methodological developments. The first one is the move away from essentialist thinking. The second one is the dynamic view of language systems, both synchronically, diachronically, and contextually. No single aspect of a complex system can be neatly isolated and displayed in a glass case. No single variable follows a linear pattern in its development if the granularity is large enough. Patterns can go up and down; individuals may deviate from the general trend, and individuals may behave differently depending on a wide range of socio-contextual factors but also depending on their mood and degree of tiredness. Everything is loosely interconnected, within the individual, within the groups of peers, within the institution, and within the wider social, economic, historical, ideological, and political contexts. This means that everything can potentially have an influence on everything else and be influenced by it in return. Teachers who are overworked, underappreciated, underpaid, and unhappy risk burnout. Such an example is presented in Afreen and Norton's (2024, this issue) contribution to volunteer teaching. At the start of the 2-year period, the volunteers were struggling and had to use emotional labor strategies to keep a smile on their faces. By the end of the period, the working situation had improved, and teacher morale was better with a small remuneration and better organisation. Students are often emotional mirrors of their teachers. It means that many have suffered too, at the beginning of the study, through a process of negative emotional contagion (Moskowitz & Dewaele, 2021). There might have been unseen consequences, as learners may have transmitted this psychological burden to their families. The danger is that a process of negative reinforcement may initiate a negative spiral that affects the mental well-being and performance of teachers and students, parents, and children (see also Song & Wu, 2024, this issue). The opposite pattern is also possible, where happy teachers motivate HL students, and where parents using the HL with their children see the linguistic glass as half full rather than half empty and can be playful (Cantas, 2024, this issue).

Another big step forward is the way emotions are conceptualised in this special issue: They may have a positive or negative valence but they are not categorised into simplistic “good” and “bad” emotions. As Driver (2024, this issue) points out in her contribution, they are double-edged swords that can be wielded in different ways leading to different outcomes. All learners experience a wide variety of (sometimes conflicting) emotions. These emotions may be more salient in language classes than in any other type of class because the former brings up identity issues in an environment where there is social pressure to conform to local expectations. This is particularly true for HL learners, who may experience ambiguous emotions about their ethnic, cultural, and linguistic roots and identity (Samata, 2014). From a more embodied perspective, one could say that for HL learners and users, the HL is linked to the voices of their grandparents and parents; to the smell and sound of food being prepared, tasted, and shared in a joyous atmosphere (Elabdali, 2024, this issue); to music and dancing and laughing (MacIntyre et al., 2017). Huang and Chan (2024, this issue) show that the community can be the basis of a powerful motivation to master the HL and to develop an Indigenous heritage self. The HL can, of course, also be the reminder of cultural values the HL user may want to reject, of memories that are too painful to remember, of shame at not fully fitting in that community anymore and anxiety that using the HL might trigger mockery (Sevinç & Dewaele, 2018), and of social injustice faced when being perceived as a low-prestige member of the HL community.

In contrast, foreign language (FL) learners for whom the new language and culture are no more than a sliver of land rising out of the blue sea framed by white cumuli have none of these rich positive and negative connotations or these multimodal representations about the FL.

Reading the various contributions, I was reminded about the parallelisms between learners and clients in teaching spaces and therapeutic spaces, the teachers and psychotherapists, and their common aims and practices (Bager-Charleson & McBeath, 2023). The space must provide security and act as an emotional refuge to discuss important general and personal matters, including insecurity, guilt, shame, anger, worry, and family conflict but also love, joy, enthusiasm, resilience, optimism, and attachment. Teachers and psychotherapists act like guides, but the learners and clients need to put in the effort to make progress. The process can be painful, slow, and nonlinear. By inviting learners and clients to reflect on their choices and (in)actions, teachers and psychotherapists can boost self-awareness, self-understanding, and agency, which can ultimately lead to healing, increased confidence, and empowerment.

I have often argued that as applied linguists, we have a duty to promote social justice through rigorous research and the dissemination of our findings to the wider public (Dewaele, 2023). The contributors to this special issue have reached the first stage brilliantly. I hope they will manage to reach the next stage too. Educators, school principals, teachers, HL students, and parents need to be informed that HL is not just any language and that it does not need to be a burden but can be a runway for take-off. While proficiency in the HL and emotional attachment to it may vary considerably, the potential for growth is enormous.

What Colin Baker wrote about the role of parents in bringing up multilingual children applies just as much to both parents and teachers looking after HL learners:

It is not just parents who control or influence the destiny of a child's three or more languages. The child does as well. Children are influenced by their peer group and the mass media, by family friends and extended family, by experiences in the street and playground. Parents are like gardeners that prepare the soil, plant, water and care. Growth in languages is greatly promoted by skillful gardeners, but is also affected by the nature of the plant, other flowers in the garden, the changing environment, and shifting language climates (cited in Festman et al., 2017, p. 29).