Dynamics of linguistic and social change: Minority languages in Hungary and the sociolinguistic situation of Serbian

Abstract

Over the past decades, minority languages and processes of language shift/maintenance have become an important scholarly concern. This paper aims to describe in brief the sociolinguistic situation of the Serbian minority language in Hungary with special attention paid to the relation between language ideology and processes of language shift/maintenance. The first section of this paper presents the current socio-political framework for protection of minority languages in Hungary. The second paper's section provides an overview of the main sociolinguistic surveys of the minority languages in Hungary that have had many centuries of contact with Serbian i.e. German, Romanian, Bulgarian, and Croatian. Finally, the paper provides a quick recapitulation of the Serbian language research in Hungary, and depicts the current sociolinguistic situation of Serbian.

Predstavlja se kratki sociolingvistički opis srpskog kao manjinskog jezika u Mađarskoj, i to pre svega odnos dvojezičnosti, održanja/zamene jezika i jezičke ideologije govornika. Radi uvida u društveni kontekst daje se pregled sociolingvističkih proučavanja manjinskih jezika koji imaju razvijeni kontakt sa srpskim, i to: nemačkog, rumunskog, bugarskog, hrvatskog. Na kraju, dat je kratak pregled dosadašnjih istraživanja srpskog jezika u Mađarskoj i opisana je savremena sociolingvistička situacija srpskog kao manjinskog jezika.