The Languages We Carry and the Work of Agnes He

In a world shaped by migration, globalization and digital communication, language no longer belongs to a single place, community, or identity. For Agnes He, professor of applied linguistics in the Department of Asian & Asian AmericanStudies at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, language is more than a tool for communication. It is a window into identity, migration and the everyday experiences that shape human life.

He approaches language as a social practice embedded in culture and human interaction. "Language is not just a medium we use to send messages," she explains. "It is about understanding a person, their experiences, their values and how they situate themselves in the world."

This view that language and life are inseparable guides her work as a founding director of the Center for Multilingual and Intercultural Communication and as a researcher studying multilingualism, immigration and intercultural communication.

He's interest in language began early. Born in Shanghai and raised in Beijing, she grew up in a linguistically diverse environment. China contains many dialect families that are often mutually unintelligible but are grouped together under the label "Chinese." Because of this, language variation was a visible part of everyday life.

As an undergraduate studying English language and literature, He encountered the transformative power of learning another language. It opened access to new forms of expression, literature, and cultural history.

That realization deepened when she lived in Singapore, one of the world's most multilingual societies. Despite being ethnically Chinese, He often found she could not communicate with other Chinese Singaporeans in their regional dialects. English became the shared language.

Experiences like these revealed something fundamental. Language shapes how people recognize and position one another socially, culturally, and geographically.

He's research examines how language functions in multilingual communities, particularly among immigrant families in the United States. A central focus of her work is heritage language development, which looks at how children of immigrants relate to the languages spoken in their homes.

For many years, scholars believed immigrant languages followed a predictable pattern of decline across generations. The first generation maintained fluency, the second generation retained partial understanding, and the third generation often lost the language entirely.

He's research tells a more complex story.

Through long term ethnographic studies of Chinese immigrant families, she found that heritage language use does not simply decline over time. Instead, it shifts in dynamic ways as family members adapt to new social environments.

Children may resist speaking their parents' language when they are young as they try to fit in with English speaking peers. Parents who are concerned about academic success may also switch to English at home. Yet later in life, many of those same children return to their heritage language, often in college or adulthood, seeking cultural connection or new professional opportunities.

"When we travel, we may not bring our luggage," He says. "But we always bring our language."

In her recent book, Voices of Immigration: A Serial Narrative Ethnography of Language Shift, He explores this process through detailed accounts of everyday interactions in immigrant households. The book introduces the concept of "linguistic repertoire shift," which describes how people draw on multiple languages in different ways as their lives evolve.

Rather than thinking about language as something people either keep or lose, He encourages a broader view. "We don't simply lose one language and gain another," she explains. "What changes is our linguistic repertoire: the full range of languages, styles, accents and communicative resources we draw on in different moments of our lives."

In this framework, language is not a fixed possession but a dynamic set of tools that expands, contracts and reorganizes as individuals move across families, institutions and national borders.

In 2014, He founded the Center for Multilingual and Intercultural Communication (MIC)to bring together scholars from across disciplines who study language in real world contexts. The center supports research, education and public engagement focused on multilingualism and intercultural communication.

The center's work spans multiple departments and fields, including linguistics, psychology, sociology, education and cultural studies. This interdisciplinary approach reflects He's belief that language cannot be understood in isolation.

In a large-scale, longitudinal project focusing on communication between international graduate teaching assistants and domestic undergraduate students that was funded by the NSF, for example, linguists analyze speech patterns, psychologists examine how listeners adapt to unfamiliar accents, and ethnographers observe classroom interactions over time.

While He's research addresses complex linguistic questions, its implications extend far beyond the classroom or laboratory.

At its core, her work is about empathy.

Learning and engaging with multiple languages, she argues, helps people understand perspectives different from their own. It expands the ways individuals connect with others and fosters a deeper appreciation of cultural diversity.

"When you can communicate in more languages, you are at an entirely different level," she says. "It makes us better human beings. It makes us more empathetic."

This philosophy also shapes projects like Stony Brook Stories of Language and Life, an initiative that collects narratives from students, faculty and staff about their multilingual experiences. The project highlights the personal and emotional dimensions of language.

Her scholarship has earned national and international recognition, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, one of the most prestigious honors in the humanities. The fellowship provided her with the time and intellectual space to deepen her long-term ethnographic research on immigrant language practices and identity formation.

External grants from major foundations have further supported her sustained, community-embedded research model, enabling her to document language use as it unfolds across years rather than isolated moments. That long view, she notes in professional talks, is essential to understanding how multilingual identities develop and shift over time.

In addition to her research, He serves as Secretary of the American Association for Applied Linguistics, one of the leading scholarly organizations in the field. In that role, she works with colleagues nationwide to support research initiatives, mentor emerging scholars and strengthen the discipline's public engagement.

The position has given her a broader vantage point on applied linguistics as a field increasingly connected to issues of migration, education policy and global mobility. It also reinforces her commitment to building scholarly communities that are collaborative, interdisciplinary and attentive to real-world impact.

As global migration and digital technology continually reshape how languages evolve, that human-centered perspective remains at the heart of He's work. Through her research and leadership, she continues to explore the profound ways language and life are intertwined.

- Minji Kang