Maintaining the Heritage Language in the Family’s Linguistic Cocktail

Abstract

This study mainly explored the language planning vis-à-vis heritage language maintenance of a migrant multilingual Igorot family in Malaybalay, Mindanao. By employing descriptive qualitative research design via Focus Group Discussion (FGD), this study revealed that the family’s language planning is covert, with the father acting as an unconscious language planner. This role has helped maintain the heritage language, ‘Kankanaey,’ within a multilingual linguistic cocktail, which includes Ilocano, Filipino, English, and Bisaya. Though multilingualism gives birth to this linguistic cocktail in the family to communicate in different communication situations (i.e., family, family-relative, social, and educational affairs), it does not directly threaten the maintenance of their heritage language because it is practiced between and among family members and relatives. The family’s use of Kankanaey within their inner circle, despite the grandson’s unfamiliarity with it, does not suggest a gradual loss of the language. As the grandson is still in his teenage years, there is potential for him to acquire and maintain the heritage language. This study further demonstrated that the language planning of the family serves as a concrete basis for the local legislators to make policies concerning education, specifically a policy involving the recognition of heritage languages that form students’ linguistic identities, a policy capable of securing these languages to serve as bridging languages to learn best a second language.