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THE NC HUNGARIAN CLUB In the following, I will analyze the characteristics of these two subcommunities and aim to show along which characteristics are these two communities the most susceptible to differ and how these differences influence the meaning and function of code-switching in the two relevant communities. I attempt to highlight those statistically significant variables along which G1 and G2 groups differ. With a view to that, statistical tests Jump and SPSS have been run on the sample. Sociolinguistic characteristics of the NC Hungarian Club In the following section, I first characterize the NC Hungarian Club in terms of its sociolinguistic characteristics, then I highlight those sociolinguistic characteristics which show statistically significant patterns in Gl and G2 groups. The quantitative findings rely on sociolinguistic data collected via questionnaires (see Appendix 3) by the author and Bolonyai in the course of sociolinguistic interviews in 2007 and 2008. Of the subjects, 30°’ (76%) are first- and 9 (24%) second-generation speakers. Second-generation speakers were either born in the USA, or they arrived in the USA before the age of 7, that is, they started school in the USA. The average age of the subjects is 50 years, which shows that it is an aging community. Taking into consideration the ages of G1 and G2 speakers, this figure is even more striking. The average age of G1 speakers is 58 years, while the average age of G2 speakers is 25 years. This data reinforces the fact that the NC Hungarian Club is attended by older G1 members and by some young G2 members, mostly the children of G1 speakers. There are slightly more female (N=21) than male (N=18) subjects in the sample. With regard to the educational and professional status of the club, it is a highly prestigious one as the vast majority of club members (74%) have BA or higher qualifications, and only 26% have “only” a high school diploma. It must be noted though that the majority of G2 speakers are still studying, so their qualifications are hardly relevant in this respect. The majority (41%) of the subjects have professional jobs, 28% of them are retired, though most of them also had highly qualified jobs, 18% are manual workers or students (mostly G2 subjects), and 13% work in the service sector. The majority of the subjects (70%) profess to be of Hungarian-American ethnicity, and 24% claim to be of Hungarian. It is interesting to note that 278 As some data are missing from the sample, in the statistical analyses, only 28 subjects are counted as first-generation speakers.
