Oldal 95 [95]
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
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