Thesis abstract:

«p»In 1964, Joshua Fishman, a pioneer scholar in sociolinguistics and bilingual education, warned that children from different ethnolinguistic backgrounds living in English-speaking countries would lose their heritage language by not speaking or comprehending it by the second to the third generation.«/p» «p»Sixty years later, today, indeed, many heritage languages in English speaking countries do not survive past the second or third generation. The question is why? Why are children losing their heritage languages despite being immersed in them from birth. «/p» «p»To date, the literature has argued that pressure from the dominant language and various other factors hinder language maintenance and cause rapid language shifts. While this could be true, I argue that children's inability to speak their heritage language, despite being immersed in it from birth, is due to receptive bilingualism-a significant challenge for many parents, which is understudied in the literature of family language policy and requires critical research attention.«/p»