Ethnic minorities' language attitudes toward heritage dialects and official standard languages: a narrative review across cognitive, affective, and behavioral dimensions.

Authors

Wei Chen, Yok Fee Lee, Ratna Roshida Binti Ab Razak, Arfah Binti Ab Majid, Guopeng Lv

Published in

Frontiers in psychology. Volume 17. Pages 1818757. Epub Sep 28, 2026.

Abstract

Language attitudes among ethnic minority communities have been examined extensively, yet most studies focus on single dimensions rather than on how cognitive, affective, and behavioral orientations interact to form coherent attitudinal configurations. This narrative review synthesizes 18 studies published between 2015 and 2026 to characterize the cognitive, affective, and behavioral dimensions of ethnic minorities' attitudes toward heritage dialects and official standard languages, and to identify the stable patterns emerging from dimensional interaction. Analysis reveals five recurrent themes within each dimension, all modulated by standardization strategy type and ethnic identity strength. The dimensions interact through four recursive pathways: cognition shapes affect, affect drives behavior, and behavior feeds back into both cognition and affect. These interactions produce three distinct stable configurations: assimilation, resistance, and structured ambivalence. Among them, structured ambivalence (including its domain-differentiated subtype) is the most frequently observed. Contrary to the assumption that intermediate states are merely transitional, domain-differentiated code choice acts as a psychological buffer, sustaining conflicting attitudes across time. Two intervention studies further demonstrate that critical language awareness and translanguaging pedagogy can redirect ambivalent configurations toward resistance. The review proposes an integrated "three dimensions-four pathways-three patterns" framework that consolidates fragmented research and identifies methodological gaps, particularly the underrepresentation of behavioral data and the scarcity of longitudinal evidence on pattern transition.

PMID:
42865731
Bibliographic data and abstract were imported from PubMed on 13 Oct 2026.

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