Dimensions of linguistic otherness: prospects of minority language maintenance in Hungary

Abstract

After some preliminary remarks on minority policy and potential impacts of Eastern enlargement of the EU in Central and Eastern Europe, we give a brief overview of the basic characteristics of the sociolinguistic and ideological context, as well as of minority policy and legislation concerning autochthonous minorities in Hungary. In the next section of the paper we introduce the results of a national sociolinguistic language shift survey conducted by the authors, focusing here on the comparative data on language and identity of the six communities studied. This is followed by a detailed analysis of the attitudes of the Romanian and Serbian communities to mother tongue and national identity. Research results presented in our article demonstrate that the language-identity link is not self-evident: these concepts need to be separated if real linguistic (and ethnic) arrangements are to be understood. Analysis of the ‘architecture’ of the respective ethnic identities and the role of minority languages in the construction and negotiation of identities revealed that the native language plays different roles within the studied communities.