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CHAPTER 5 BACKGROUND INFORMATION highly influenced by generational affiliation. Most G1 speakers (71%) claim to have Hungarian identity, while the majority of G2 (59%) subjects profess to have dual, Hungarian-American identity. Relying on the attitude and language use examination of Gl and G2 subjects, the concept of English, Hungarian, and code-switched languages as social and cognitive devices has shown significantly different patterns in the two groups of subjects. G1 speakers have a closer, more intimate affiliation with the Hungarian language as for them it is the language of self-expression as well as the desired home language. For them, Hungarian, the mother tongue “has to do with an internal sense of self (...) with relationships with one’s parents”*”. The attitude of G2 speakers to the Hungarian language, however, is emotionally more distant. They value Hungarian as part of their cultural heritage, but for them, “the new language — English — has gained the characteristics of a first language”**’. English is the language of self-expression, and they lean less towards agreeing with Hungarian being the first language learned at home in Hungarian-English families. Hungarian, the parents’ language therefore, seems to have “less emotional significance for G2 speakers”*’. G1 speakers, on the other hand, are aware of the socio-economic opportunities that the knowledge of English — as the language of communication with the host society — ensures for them, so they attribute a highly pragmatic value to it. The overwhelmingly negative attitude to code-switching as “weird, ugly, incomprehensible”*® is not typical in this community, and members of the community simply acknowledge using it. However, Gl speakers seem to have a more distant attitude to the act of code-switching. They are highly aware that code-switching is a result ofthe contact situation between Hungarian and English languages. For G2 speakers, code-switching is more closely associated with their bilingual sense of self, as they claim it is the best means of expressing their dual ethnic identity”. There is a clear separation of domains in the community, Hungarian is predominantly used in the private domain, at home, with friends, and English is the public domain, used at work, school, and in the media. However, English penetrates the private domains of G2 speakers. Although Hungarian is claimed to be the home language, reciprocal language use, that is, G2 57 Michal Tannenbaum, The multifaceted aspects of language maintenance: A new measure for its assessment in immigrant families, International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, 6 (5) (2003), 384 Tannenbaum, The multifaceted aspects of language maintenance, International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, 384 259 Tannenbaum, Ibid., 384 260 Kendall A. King — Natalia Ganuza, Language, identity, education, and transmigration: Chilean adolescents in Sweden, Journal of Language, Identity and Education, 4(3) (2005), 190 61 Gardner-Chloros — McEntee-Atalianis — Finnis, Language attitudes and use, International Journal of Multilingualism, 52-80 258 - 108 +
