‘Then suddenly I spoke a lot of Spanish’ – Changing linguistic practices and heritage language from adolescents’ points of view

Abstract

This article investigates the multilingual experiences of three Norwegian and Spanish-speaking adolescents with transnational backgrounds. Drawing on narrative analysis and positioning theory, the article seeks to understand how the adolescents position themselves in relation to different expectations of linguistic competence, identities, and their cultural and linguistic inheritance. By investigating adolescents’ experiences of family multilingualism and heritage languages, as expressed in interviews and language portraits drawings (cf), the article adds to recent efforts in family multilingualism research toward understanding the experiences of multilingual children and adolescents. Moreover, the article expands on the current scholarly discussions of heritage language identities (cf), by shedding light on how adolescents hold complex multilingual experiences and how they continuously adapt to changing sociolinguistic circumstances within the family context.