Sources of variation in attitudes toward minority, majority and foreign language
A minority L1 perspective
Vojvodina, an autonomous province in northern Serbia, is a historically multilingual and multicultural area where
multilingual education forms a cornerstone of linguistic, educational and social policy and practice: in addition to the majority
language, five minority languages are also in official use and speakers of these languages may receive education in their L1.
However, such a situation does not warrant positive attitudes toward the majority language. In fact, attitudes toward the majority
population have been shown to be less positive among minority group members who receive their education in their L1 (
Veres 2013). In addition to this, the effect of environment (compact vs. diffuse) has
been shown to interact with attitudes. The paper examines the language attitudes of 423 Hungarian L1 grammar school pupils towards
(1) their (minority) mother tongue (Hungarian), (2) Serbian as the majority language and (3) English as a foreign language, based
on their value judgements and taking into account numerous variables which might prove to interact with their attitudes. The
results of the research are expected to add to the study of language attitudes in a multilingual context, to help us understand
better language situations in areas where bilingualism is promoted and to aid the implementation of coherent language
policies.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.Language attitudes and language learning
- 3.Language teaching in Vojvodina
- 4.Research methodology
- 4.1Participants
- 4.2Instrument
- 4.3Research design
- 5.Results
- 5.1Value judgements of Hungarian, Serbian and English
- 5.2Effects of the investigated variables on value judgements
- 6.Discussion and implications
- 7.Concluding remarks
- Notes
-
References