“There is no space for being German”: Portraits of willing and reluctant Heritage Language Learners of German.
Date
2010
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Brill
Abstract
Some heritage language learners (HLLs) are comfortable identifying themselves as such, while others are decidedly reluctant to adopt this term (Piño & Piño, 2000). HLLs in this paper are defined as those students having a parent or grandparent who speaks German or those who have spent a significant part of their childhood in a German-speaking country (as suggested in Beaudrie & Ducar, 2005, p. 13). This paper highlights case studies of six HLLs of German at the post-secondary level who are participants in a motivation study (Dressler, 2008). Three students are ‘willing’ HLLs. The additional three case studies are of students that I will call ‘reluctant’ HLLs of German, and this paper explores the reasons behind their reluctance and the components of self-identification, which include language identity (Block, 2007; Pierce, 1995); language expertise; affiliation and inheritance (Leung, Harris, & Rampton, 1997); cultural artifacts (Bartlett, 2007) and positioning (Block, 2007).
Description
Keywords
Sociolinguistics, Languages and linguistics
Citation
Dressler, R. (2010). “There is no space for being German”: Portraits of willing and reluctant heritage language learners of German. Heritage Language Journal, 7(2), 162-181. https://doi.org/10.46538/hlj.7.2.2