Diversity and contestation in linguistic ideologies: German speakers in Hungary

Abstract

ABSTRACTThe classic sociolinguistic opposition between status and solidarity as organizing principles of linguistic variation is currently being integrated with broader social theories of symbolic domination and resistance. However, not enough attention has yet been paid to the multiplicity and fluidity of both dominant and oppositional linguistic ideologies within a single social order. Changing elite conceptions about the links between language and social group vie with each other for supremacy, and are in turn contested by various forms of resistance among linguistic minorities. Debates surrounding the linguistic census in 19th and 20th century Hungary are used here as evidence about diverse dominant ideologies, to show how German-Hungarians have responded by producing multiple, competing, and ambiguous oppositional conceptions and linguistic practices. (Linguistic ideologies, forms of resistance, politics of language, minority languages, German speakers in Hungary).