Contested linguistic heritages: CODAs and denaskuloj in comparison

In the contemporary world, with more and more people and languages in contact, the goal of inclusive societies should pass through the appreciation and valorization of heritage languages, both spoken and signed. Many of them are often contested, i.e., not considered full-fledged languages, or less valuable, by the majority of society. This paper presents two case studies of contested language heritages: CODAs, i.e., hearing children of Deaf parent(s) and denaskuloj, i.e. Esperanto family speakers. We focus on CODAs who can sign fluently and denaskuloj who speak fluently. Regardless of different patterns in society and culture, the sociolinguistic situations of both cases show interesting similarities. We address the in-group attitudes of CODAs and denaskuloj based on preliminary qualitative data, in order to propose feasible strategies to increase the prestige of minority spoken and sign languages alike.