“Dobra polska mowa”: monoglot ideology, multilingual reality and Polish organisations in the UK
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Kinga Kozminska
and
Zhu Hua
Abstract
This article examines the tension between multilingual reality of migrant life and monoglot standard ideology in Polish grassroots organisations in the UK. Drawing on linguistic ethnographic fieldwork from 2017 to 2019, we show that while flexible multilingual practices characterise the community’s multilingual reality, a preference for monolingual standard Polish exists in community activities and online profiles. We argue that, through common orientation to the denotational code and national identity, the organisations give preference to language rather than the speech community of the immediate surroundings and attempt to create a representation of a timeless unified Polish community in line with the static framework of the European nation-state that promotes linguistic, cultural and racial purity. While advocating sedentary, permanent and classed images of migration and integration into British society, the organisations marginalise uses of other language varieties and erase observed historical, class and regional differences within the community.
Funding source: Economic and Social Research Council "Family Language Policy: A Multi-level Investigation of Multilingual Practices in Transnational Families”
Award Identifier / Grant number: ES/N019105/1
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Research funding: The paper draws data from the project Family Language Policy: A Multi-level Investigation of Multilingual Practices in Transnational Families, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) (ES/N019105/1).
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Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Introducing a Varia section
- Introduction: the changing faces of transnational communities in Britain
- Living with diversity and change: intergenerational differences in language and identity in the Somali community in Britain
- “Pride” and “profit”: a sociolinguistic profile of the Chinese communities in Britain
- “Dobra polska mowa”: monoglot ideology, multilingual reality and Polish organisations in the UK
- The UK’s shifting diasporic landscape: negotiating ethnolinguistic heterogeneity in Greek complementary schools post-2010
- “Talk in Tamil!” – Does Sri Lankan Tamil onward migration from Europe influence Tamil language maintenance in the UK?
- A disavowed community: the case of new Italian migrants in London
- Language attitudes and language practices of the Lebanese community in the UK
- Varia
- The functions of language mixing in the social networks of Singapore students
- Indigenization in a downgraded continuum: Ideologies behind phonetic variation in Namibian Afrikaans
- Book Review
- Andrea C. Schalley and Susana A. Eisenchlas (eds.): Handbook of Home Language Maintenance and Development: Social and Affective Factors
