Department Chair

Gabriel Gutierrez, Ph.D.


Department of Chicana/o Studies
Jerome Richfield Hall 148
Hours: M–F, 8 am to 5 pm

Phone: 818-677-2734
Fax: 818-677-7578

Send email

Minor in Heritage and Community Languages

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.

FOR MORE INFORMATION ABOUT THIS MINOR, CONTACT: ANA SÁNCHEZ-MUÑOZ, Ph.D.

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.

Department Chair

Gabriel Gutierrez, Ph.D.


Department of Chicana/o Studies
Jerome Richfield Hall 148
Hours: M–F, 8 am to 5 pm

Phone: 818-677-2734
Fax: 818-677-7578

Send email

Scroll back to the top of the page