Advantages of visiting your home country: how brief reimmersion in their native country impacts migrants’ native language access

Abstract

The study explores how native language (L1) lexical access is affected by immersion in a second-language (L2) environment, and by short-term reimmersion in the L1 environment. We compared the L1 picture-naming performance of Polish–English bilinguals living in the UK (migrants) against that of bilinguals living in Poland (controls). Each group was tested twice: the migrants while in the UK (L2 immersion) and after visiting Poland (L1 reimmersion); the controls twice in their L1 environment. Contrary to our expectations, there was no main effect of group, thus suggesting that L2 immersion per se does not impact L1 lexical access. Nevertheless, migrants benefitted from L1 reimmersion by showing faster naming latencies for high-frequency words after a short visit to their home country, probably due to more opportunities to encounter these words. Overall, the study shows that the cognitive system is sensitive to the language environment by quickly adapting the activation level of lexical items.

Heritage language use in the country of residence matters for language maintenance, but short visits to the homeland can boost heritage language outcomes

“…Evidence for heritage language reversal after re-immersion in the country of origin has been reported in two lines of bilingualism research. The first one relates to studies on first-generation bilingual adult speakers who are re-exposed to the heritage language through short-term visits (between 2 and 6 weeks per year) to the home country, either for study or for leisure (Chamorro et al, 2016;Genevska-Hanke, 2017;Gargiulo and van de Weijer, 2020;Casado et al, 2023). These studies have shown that the heritage language can be re-activated even after short re-immersion, leading to improved performance on structures that were vulnerable prior to re-immersion.…”

“…What is more, short-or long-term re-exposure to the native variety in the country of origin does not affect all language domains equally. Numerous studies have shown that structures that are more sensitive to input fluctuations, e.g., vocabulary (Casado et al, 2023;Gordon and Meir, 2023), as well as structures at the syntax-discourse interface, which may be more vulnerable to crosslinguistic pressure or influence (CLI) from the dominant language, may be more vulnerable in minority/heritage language acquisition contexts compared to syntactically conditioned structures (Argyri and Sorace, 2007;Daskalaki et al, 2019Daskalaki et al, , 2020. Whether or not these structures are equally re-activated after re-immersion in the country of origin seems to be a function of the length of re-immersion and the experimental task.…”

“…In a similar vein, a recent study tested first-generation Polish-English adult immigrants before re-immersion in the L1 (Polish) after short trips to Poland (on average ∼3 months) and 7 days after L1 re-immersion on a picture-naming task (Casado et al, 2023).…”

“…In the context of the linguistic phenomena we targeted in the present study, we took visits to and from the country of origin to provide opportunities for contact from more speakers and in a diversity of context. For vocabulary, re-immersion in the country of origin may provide heritage speakers with more opportunities to hear and produce words that may not be used as frequently in the country of residence due to the restricted contexts of use and speakers (Gollan et al, 2015;Casado et al, 2023). For subject placement, visits to and from the country of origin may indicate contact with the variety where VS is highly preferred (see Daskalaki et al, 2019Daskalaki et al, , 2020Daskalaki et al, , 2022 for monolingual speakers' performance tested in Greece).…”

“…We also hypothesized that (re-)immersion in the variety spoken in the homeland could potentially boost heritage children's performance. For vocabulary, we hypothesized that re-immersion in the country of origin may provide heritage speakers with more opportunities to hear and produce words that may not be used as frequently in the country of residence due to the restricted contexts of use and speakers (Gollan et al, 2015;Casado et al, 2023). We also expected HL words that are used relatively infrequently in the country of residence for an extended period (i.e., while immersed in the English environment) and may not be as easily accessed during HL word production, may benefit from re-immersion in the country of origin (Baus et al, 2013) and may be boosted cumulatively after short re-exposure.…”