Dressler, Roswita2024-04-052024-04-052010Dressler, 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.7.2.2https://hdl.handle.net/1880/11828710.11575/PRISM/43130Some 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).enUnless otherwise indicated, this material is protected by copyright and has been made available with authorization from the copyright owner. You may use this material in any way that is permitted by the Copyright Act or through licensing that has been assigned to the document. For uses that are not allowable under copyright legislation or licensing, you are required to seek permission.Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 Internationalhttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/SociolinguisticsLanguages and linguisticsArticleMasters Scholarshiphttps://doi.org/10.46538/hlj.7.2.2