“In Our House We Speak Polish”

Abstract

This study explores the ways the value of Polish is framed in a promotional campaign for Polish heritage language education (HLE), and how heteroglossia (Bakhtin, 1981) functions within campaign interviews to construct alternative visions for the future of Polish HLE. In communities where knowledge of the HL cannot easily be credentialed or monetized, and where increasing demographic diversity demands to be acknowledged, neoliberal and essentialist arguments for learning the HL often seem incomplete and insufficient. Counting Polish among these languages, I explore how advocates of Polish HLE frame the ways in which Polish can serve as a resource for heritage speakers, identify important absences in this discourse, and then discuss how centripetal and centrifugal discourses (Bakhtin, 1981) vie for primacy in their arguments. I conclude by critically examining the ideologies that contribute to this promotional strategy and suggest future avenues for promotion that move beyond pitches about the global economy and essentialist identity, by centering locality and hybridity