Cercetare sociolingvistică longitudinală asupra identităţii româneşti din Ungaria

Abstract

This paper examines bilingual subjects’ twenty years changes in defining their own affiliation to their Romanian ethnic group, which can be characterized with a Romanian– Hungarian language shift process. In this circumstance the statement “group identity can survive language shift” (Edwards 1985: 163) has a special importance. The same Romanian subjects (members in the historic group) living in Hungary were asked (with direct and indirect questions) three times (in 1990, 2000, and 2010) in semi-structured interviews (tape-recorded). Based on subjects’ responses mainly three types of ethnic identity changes could be detected during the twenty years. One of them was in synchrony with the longitudinal trend of Romanian–Hungarian language shift process. Subjects included in the second type confirmed strongly their Romanian ethnic group identity in 2010 despite the fact that they rejected it in 1990 (and in 2000). Subjects from the third type declared themselves consecutively having Romanian identity. These types of twenty years changes were strongly influenced by historic time (including the period from the collapse of socialist regime to the EU membership of Hungary), and the lifespan of the subjects (getting older makes the importance to go back to ethnic group roots).