Linguistic identity and ideologies of Hungarian commuters from Vojvodina

Abstract

The present research focuses on the examination of Vojvodina Hungarian commuters’ linguistic identity and ideology. The frequent travelers from Serbia to Hungary, who mostly commute between the two countries for labour and education purposes, face the necessity of interacting in differing linguistic communities defined by varying norms and expectations to which they need to adjust. The commuters whose mother tongue is the Contact Variety of Hungarian spoken in Vojvodina have to frequently, very often on a daily basis, communicate in Serbian and in the Standard Variety of Hungarian spoken in Hungary. As a consequence, they are continually required to define and redefine their linguistic identities. In this context the multilingual identity of the minority community exerts an identity-forming influence which provides the capability (for the members of the community) of easily crossing over between the communities of Serbs and Hungarians (in Hungary), but it also creates an “in-between” identity among the commuters. The language ideologies (beliefs, ideas) that dominate a speech community have a crucial impact on the speakers’ linguistic identity and every-day language use, too. Ideologies related to languages, as well as their relationships, prestige and status, define and circumscribe the process of identification of the speakers with the various languages/language varieties they speak.

The study attempts to answer the question of how the research participants react to the various linguistic situations and their challenges, of how and to what extent they identify with their mother tongue (and with which dialect of it), and finally what language ideologies influence these linguistic phenomena.