UNIVERSITY CATALOG: 2023-2024

Program: Minor in Heritage and Community Languages

Program Description

The Heritage and Community Languages minor is an 18 unit program that provides fundamental principles on heritage language attrition, loss and maintenance. The program, based on critical language awareness and critical race theory, includes heritage language courses, linguistic ideologies, language attitudes, sociolinguistics, bilingualism, and heritage language acquisition and development in the U.S.

Program Requirements

1. Required Core Courses (12 units)

CHS 101 Spanish for Chicanos I (3)
or CHS 102 Spanish for Chicanos II (3)
or CHS 486A Nahuatl I (3)

CHS 333 Language and Society: Chicanas/os and Other Language Minority Children (3)

CHS 433 Language Acquisition of the Chicana/o and ESL Speakers (3)
or LING 417 Language Development and Acquisition (3)

LING 250 Language(s) in California (3)

2. Electives (6 units)

Choose two courses from the following:

CHS 482 Language of the Barrio (3)
LING 427 Languages in Contact (3)
LING 441 Sociolinguistics (3)
LING 447 Bilingualism in the U.S. (3)

Total Units in the Minor: 18

Contact

Department of Chicana and Chicano Studies
Chair: Rosa RiVera Furumoto
Jerome Richfield Hall (JR) 148
(818) 677-2734
chicanostudies@csun.edu

Program Learning Outcomes

Students receiving a minor in Heritage and Community Languages will be able to:

  1. Formulate information in the heritage language on a wide variety of familiar topics using appropriate vocabulary and a wide range of verb tenses and moods.
  2. Summarize the foundations of the phonetics, phonology, morphology, and syntax of the heritage language.
  3. Identify grammatical terminology and categories and constructions in the heritage language (e.g., subject versus object pronoun).
  4. Analyze the sociolinguistic factors that affect heritage language-speaking communities in the U.S.
  5. Examine the variability of grammar depending on the place, social group and social context, thus moving beyond so-called ‘correct’ or prescriptive textbook grammar.
  6. Discuss why some varieties of languages are considered prestigious while others are not, drawing on current and historical sociopolitical contexts.
  7. Evaluate students’ own language attitudes.