Mapping the intellectual landscape of heritage language transmission: a bibliometric review of strategies and sociocultural dynamics within families (2014–2024)

This review provides a bibliometric examination of the academic literature pertaining to Heritage Language Transmission in Strategies and Sociocultural Dynamics within Familial Contexts, employing a dataset comprising 543 entries sourced from the Web of Science Core Collection during the period from 2014 to 2024. The primary objective of this analysis was to elucidate the intellectual framework, thematic developments, and collaborative dynamics that typify this expanding area of study. The software CiteSpace (version 6.3.R1) was utilized to perform co-citation, co-authorship, and keyword co-occurrence analyses. A refined corpus of 529 documents yielded a network consisting of 214 nodes and 535 connections, thereby providing insights into the interrelatedness of prominent authors, institutions, and thematic clusters. The results indicated a significant increase in academic production, with a notable acceleration observed post-2020. Central research themes encompassed family language policy, bilingual development in children, translanguaging phenomena, emotional dynamics, and identity negotiation processes. High-impact contributors, including Natalia Meir, Tanja Kupisch, and Johanne Paradis, were identified based on metrics such as citation frequency, degree of influence, and centrality within the network. At the institutional level, the University of Toronto, Bar Ilan University, and UiT the Arctic University of Tromsø emerged as pivotal canters of scholarly influence. On a national scale, the United States was positioned as the leader in terms of academic output and network centrality, followed by Germany, Canada, and England. The keyword analysis underscored “acquisition,” “heritage language,” and “family language policy” as predominant constructs, while emerging terminology such as “translanguaging,” “input quantity,” and “language beliefs” indicated potential new trajectories for research. This bibliometric review furnishes a detailed cartography of the heritage language transmission research domain and posits a data-driven basis for forthcoming inquiries, particularly those that focus on culturally embedded language practices, family-oriented adaptation strategies, and policy-driven interventions.