Authors

Barbara A. Janczak¹;  ¹ Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznan, Poland

Discussion

According to Hill (2011: 17), an experience of a particular place evokes different types of memories. What if the place you know changes due to a change in the reality? The border shift after World War II changed the lives of millions of people. For the Germans who decided, or were forced to stay in the Polish People’s Republic, it meant learning anew the places that had suddenly become foreign. For the Germans that remained, the new world appeared incomprehensible, not only because of the cultural differences between them and the Poles coming from the former Eastern Provinces, but also due to the language barrier. Based on the childhood memories of members of the German minority contained in their language biographies (cf. Franceschini, Veronesi 2016), our project team is trying to investigate language policy and language relations between Poles and Germans in post-war Poland. While analyzing the discourse of the recorded data, the main objective of this presentation is to answer the question of the tenets of the language policy conducted after World War II and how they influenced the language biographies of our respondents.

Franceschini, R., D. Veronesi (2016): “Lernerbiographishe Perpektiven”. In: Burwitz-Melzer, E-M. Melhorn, G., Riemer, C. et al. (eds.): Handbuch Fremdsprachenunterricht. Edition: 6. Auflage. Tübingen: Narr Franke Attempto, 247-250. Hill, S. 2011: “Memory in place”. In: New Zealand Geographer, 67: 16-20.