The missing link: language and heritage, identity and belonging project proposal

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The aim of this project is to investigate how young heritage children who are faced with three challenging tasks such as: to maintain their minority language (Polish), to develop new linguistic abilities in the majority language (English) and to find their own identity as bicultural and bilingual members of the community, negotiate the transition to school. This thesis would involve investigating possible changes in grammars of these speakers and studying how linguistic development unfolds in young children throughout the first year in school and whether these can be linked to specific social practices and the types of social networks established during this critical year. We need to understand what heritage speakers are exposed to on a daily basis in a classroom in order to provide new empirical food for thought for linguistic theory and rethink the way in which support could be possibly provided to heritage speakers and provide a better understanding of their linguistic profile. It is hoped that project will address an important gap in HS studies by adopting a multidisciplinary approach to understanding the development of both the minority and majority languages spoken by HS in their early school years. Crucially, the study will also seek to understand how starting school affects the identity of bilingual children as members of a new linguistic community (the school), one in which parents are not the main source of (linguistic) information to their children.