This paper is concerned with so-called Ethnic Orientation, defined as one’s cluster of thoughts, attitudes and behaviors towards their ancestral ethnic group. Drawing on data from Heritage Language speakers in Toronto, the authors show that Ethnic Orientation does not have the same effect on all speakers and on all linguistic variables and argue that such differences also depend on the methodological choices made by researchers in the process of data analysis. Therefore, Ethnic Orientation should be considered an important factor in analyzing Heritage Language variation, yet analytic methods need to be critically evaluated.