Hungarian private linguistic landscape in South-West Slovakia

Abstract

In the field of Linguistic Landscape research little attention has been paid to the situations where a minoritized group gives the regional majority, such as South-­‐West Slovakia where Hungarians form the majority. A clear majority of public signs, also in the region with a Hungarian majority, are only in Slovak, especially in the ‘official’, public sphere. In rural communities, signs posted by private citizens can be relatively frequent, too. In the truly non-­‐ commercial private sphere, minorities have autonomy in public language choice. I present the local practices and interpretations of the private linguistic landscape in two ‘Hungarian’ villages in South-­‐West Slovakia in the light of photos, ethnographic observations and interview data. I conclude that the signs placed by private individuals follow tendencies in other domains and they are in flux. However, most importantly, they indicate best the local norms of signage and public language choice, as well as changes in local language ideologies.