Studying sustainable bilingualism: comparing the choices of languages in Hungary’s six bilingual national minorities

Anna Borbély

doi:10.1515/ijsl-2015-0025

Article

Studying sustainable bilingualism: comparing the choices of languages in Hungary’s six bilingual national minorities

Anna Borbély

Published/Copyright: October 10, 2015

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From the journal International Journal of the Sociology of Language Volume 2015 Issue 236

Abstract

This article compares “synchronic variation of language choice” (see Gal 1979) in the populations of six bilingual national minorities living in Hungary. A special focus is on the mechanisms and factors of sustainable bilingualism represented in the various local communities of Hungary’s national minorities. We compared phases in the gradual process of language shift observable in each of the six national minority populations. The national minorities are represented in this survey study by six local communities (one for each national minority). We chose local communities where the language shift process is in the “middle”, compared to other communities of the same national minority. The results were derived from a collective project, started in 2001, which was a comparative sociolinguistic study conducted in Hungary’s six national (bilingual) minorities (hereafter HuBiLing) (see Bartha and Borbély 2006).

Keywords: language shift; sustainable bilingualism; synchronic variation of language choice; comparative sociolinguistic study; Hungary’s bilingual national minorities

Acknowledgements

In writing this article the author made use of the database of the “Dimensions of linguistic otherness: prospects of minority language maintenance in Hungary”, created by researchers in the Department of Sociolinguistics, Research Institute for Linguistics, Hungarian Academy of Sciences and Eötvös Loránd University Department of Modern Hungarian Language, between 2001 and 2004. The project has been funded by the grant from the National Research & Development Programme (NKFP 5/126/2001; coordinated by Csilla Bartha, and managed by the author), and the data analyses from the Hungarian Scientific Research Fund (OTKA K 81574; coordinated by the author). My thank goes to Csilla Bartha who has shared with me her erudition and observations on bilingualism and the role of language in society. The author wishes to thank András Vargha for performing statistical analyses for this research. My gratitude goes also to Miklós Kontra who generously answered my questions, shared useful teaching materials and discussed theory. My thanks should also go to Susan Gal, who helped me with her useful comments on a previous version of this article. Last but not least, I would like to thank Mark Newson for his hard work to adjust my English.

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Published Online: 2015-10-10

Published in Print: 2015-11-1

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https://doi.org/10.1515/ijsl-2015-0025

Keywords for this article

language shift; sustainable bilingualism; synchronic variation of language choice; comparative sociolinguistic study; Hungary’s bilingual national minorities