engleski

The impact of language use on the discourses of Hungarian migrants in Pula: Self-perception, self-presentation and the language question

This paper analyses self-perception, self-representation and positioning processes among members of the Hungarian minority living in the multicultural, multilingual city of Pula in the county of Istria, Croatia. We focus on the construction and negotiation of identity in migrant narratives, elicited in semi-structured interviews by two interviewers of different linguistic and cultural backgrounds, one being Croatian from Croatia, and the other, Hungarian from Hungary ; we believe that this difference has an impact on the way identities are managed in interpersonal communication, and predispose both the researchers and the researched to different assumptions. Our analysis is further aided by textual material on the social, economic and historical background of Pula, as it helps us locate the Hungarian minority in the complex multicultural and multilingual matrix of the city. Our results have shown that, although Hungarian is one of the oldest minority communities in the city, and receives support and recognition from the city, the use of the mother tongue is restricted to family, friends and the Hungarian cultural center, with Croatian taking precedence in all other domains and in the presence of non-Hungarian speakers. Hungarian is still important inasmuch as it supports (indeed, founds) one’s claim to a Hungarian identity, but as children in mixed marriages are not educated to become bilingual in Croatian and Hungarian, we may not talk of a steady state of bilingualism. This is especially baffling in light of the fact that all our informants are multilingual, and it was their knowledge of languages that helped secure their livelihoods and estate in Pula. Only “monolingual” Hungarian couples can afford bilingual children, and since financial and legal support is not enough to educate the children of mixed couples, the use of Hungarian will likely continue to steadily decline.

Hungarian; Croatian; minority; identity; language; anthropology

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