Heritage Bilingualism in the UK: the case of mood selection in Spanish varieties of Latin America

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Heritage speakers (HS) are 2nd-generation immigrants whoacquire their heritage language (HL) at home, but theybecome dominant in the majority language of the country. Iwill investigate HL acquisition and development bydocumenting indicative vs subjunctive mood selection ofheritage Spanish in the UK (i)to test and challenge the threeleading hypotheses which aim at explaining HL acquisition;(ii)to develop a language training programme for HS to seeif explicit instruction can influence HS's mood selection.Most of HS literature was developed in the US, where 15%of their population is Spanish speaker. Census 2021 showedthat Spanish speakers doubled in the UK in the last tenyears, so investigating its specific features in the UKbecomes more pressing, as the migration trajectories andlinguistic history differ greatly from the UScontext.Comparing children and adult HS of Spanish (7-18/19-30) will allow me to test the main hypotheses in HLacquisition, providing a substantial contribution to thetheoretical development of the field from the Europeancontext, while bridging the gap between studies in the USand the UK. A training programme for HS will be developed,contributing with original material to be shared in variouslanguage centres in London. Lastly, it will shed light on thesociolinguistic characteristics of the Latin Americancommunity in the U.K. As such, it will increase the visibilityof an ever-rising community of Speakers in the country.