Oldal 95 [95]
OCR
THE HUNGARIAN-AMERICAN COMMUNITIES IN NORTH CAROLINA Bolonyai conducted an attitude and language use survey in a group of 78 Hungarian-Americans living in North Carolina. I have access to her survey data as I gave her assistance in processing and analyzing the data. The questionnaire consisted of three parts (see Appendix 2). In the first part, subjects were asked about their individual and sociolinguistic variables such as age, gender, generation, mother tongue, competence, ethnic identity, qualifications, and job. In part 2, subjects were asked to express their opinions on three sets of statements. The first two sets consisted of 15 statements, and the statements examined the subjects’ attitudes to Hungarian, and English. The third set of statements consisted of 10 statements on the act of code-switching. In part 3, subjects were asked to answer questions on their language use tendencies, that is, which language, English or Hungarian, they use with certain people and in certain situations. The aim of this survey was to find correlations between attitude to English and Hungarian language(s) and language uses (Hungarian, English and Code-switching), language use patterns, and how these are influenced by the sociolinguistic characteristics of subjects. As no other sources are available describing the sociolinguistic characteristics of this particular community, I will rely on this. As the comprehensive sociolinguistic description of this particular community is not the primary focus of my thesis, I will highlight only the most conspicuous characteristics of the community. A comparatively low rate of Hungarians-Americans lives in North-Carolina. In 2000, 16,100 people professed to be of Hungarian descent in the state of North Carolina (US Census), while the entire population of North Carolina is 9,222,414. An even more insignificant number of people, 940, claim to speak Hungarian. Although exact figures concerning the socio-economic status of North Carolina Hungarian-Americans are lacking, in the survey conducted by Bolonyai, the high proportion of professionals, is striking. Of the subjects, 64% hold an MA or a PhD; 28% a BA; and 8% a high school certificate. Table 1: Qualifications Responses High School BA MA or PhD N=78 (11 N/A) 5 (8%) 19 (28%) 43 (64%) As Bolonyai’s survey (2007) was conducted among those Hungarian-A mericans who actively attend the Hungarian club’s events, it can be observed that among those Hungarian-Americans in North Carolina, for whom attending the Hungarian-American community’s events — including the Hungarian club — is important, the subjects have higher qualifications than the average in North Carolina. In comparison, in North Carolina, 22.5% of the population + 93 +
