„Niemiecka szkoła, polski dom”. Analiza wypracowań o udziale polskiej kultury i języka polskiego w życiu dzieci polskich emigrantów w Bawarii
“German school, Polish home.” An analysis of essays by children of Polish immigrants in Bavaria – the place of the Polish culture and language

Summary/Abstract: The primary goal of the study is to assess the perception of self and the social environment in Polish teenagers from the so-called generation 1.5 in Germany, that is, people who moved to Germany as children and adolescents, accompanying adult immigrants. The secondary goal was to compare this group with teenagers of Polish origin born and socialised in Germany. The instruments of corpus linguistics such as listing of keywords and limited keyword-based contextual analysis were applied to analyse a corpus of 37 essays by respondents aged 13–17 and attending courses of the Polish language and culture in Regensburg and Munich, on the topic “German school, Polish home. People, cultures, languages and the role of Polish in my life.” A considerable difference occurred between both groups. Teenagers from Poland cast their essays in a narrative form reporting the process of immigration, their daily struggle for social adaptation, and their hopes for future improvement. The reports exposed tension and struggle caused by the difficulty to reach the intended goals, such as adequate school achievement, social acceptance and maintenance of bonds with Poland. Teenagers born in Germany cast their reports prevailingly in a static or iterative form, viewing themselves as exceptional in a positive sense, and took pride in their bilingualism and biculturalism. The analysis also revealed different roles played by attending the Polish classes in both groups.

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