Heritage and minority languages, and their learning: A general bibliometric approach and content analysis

Abstract

The cultural and linguistic diversity that characterises our current society has led to different ways of considering languages and their status in their respective communities of use. Nowadays, not only the dominant language prevails, but other languages that characterise any social group are also increasingly taken into account, and there are studies on how they can influence the learning of the set of languages that a person uses in his or her context, and even in the teaching and learning process in general. Among these languages that represent the identity of that individual, we can find those of heritage. This paper represents the first bibliometric study on heritage and minority languages, and their connection with learning. The study period spans from the first paper published in 1989 until today, using SciMAT, software developed for longitudinal scientific mapping analysis, so this research contributes to reduce the existing gap in the scientific literature, and offers a starting point for the study of this topic. As much as 1341 research publications from the Web of Science dealing with this issue were processed and analysed. Following a bibliometric analysis, as well as the thematic and conceptual evolution of these publications, the results show a growing scientific interest in the topic from 2018, with the USA being the country with the highest production. Research was mainly carried out at universities, and the predominant research areas are Linguistics, Education and Psychology. Likewise, among the most productive authors, Silvina Montrul stands out. Finally, the main topics of interest for the scientific community are bilingualism and multilingualism, followed by maintenance of heritage languages and their speakers.