December 4, 2017 6 Comments latl ITML3 Parental beliefs about language acquisition and the non-transmission of Upper Necaxa Totonac Yvonne Lam University of Alberta CC BY 4.0 Cite as: Lam, Y. (2017, December). Parental beliefs about language acquisition and the non-transmission of Upper Necaxa Totonac. Paper presented at the Third UC Intergenerational Transmission of Minority Languages Symposium: Challenges and Benefits. https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.5661631 SCROLL DOWN TO END OF PAGE FOR COMMENTS This presentation examines the language ideologies underlying parental decisions to withhold transmission of Upper Necaxa Totonac, an indigenous language of Mexico with approximately 3,200 speakers. Studies on language shift often focus on macro-social factors, such as educational policies and socioeconomic discrimination, that lead parents to value the majority language. However, these factors alone do not fully explain the non-transmission of the home language, as there are many successful examples of multilingual families. Based on ethnographic fieldwork with 12 families, I show that it is equally important to consider parental beliefs about language acquisition. Parents’ own personal experiences lead them to think that Spanish is difficult to learn at an older age, causing them to prioritize its transmission from infancy. Furthermore, they share the common belief that the simultaneous acquisition of two languages confuses children, and they worry that learning Totonac will hinder their ability to acquire Spanish. In addition, parents hold a weak “impact belief” (De Houwer 1999) and feel incapable of influencing their children’s disinterest in speaking Totonac—further justification for not transmitting the language. It is vital to address parental beliefs about bilingual acquisition in order to encourage them to transmit Totonac alongside Spanish. Reference: De Houwer, Annick. 1999. “Environmental Factors in Early Bilingual Development: The Role of Parental Beliefs and Attitudes.” In Bilingualism and Migration, edited by Guus Extra and Ludo Verhoeven, 75–95. Berlin, Germany: Mouton de Gruyter.