Coping with Socially Sensitive Topics: Discourse on Interethnic Marriages among Elderly Members of the Serbian Minority in Hungary Cover Image

Coping with Socially Sensitive Topics: Discourse on Interethnic Marriages among Elderly Members of the Serbian Minority in Hungary
Coping with Socially Sensitive Topics: Discourse on Interethnic Marriages among Elderly Members of the Serbian Minority in Hungary

Author(s): Marija Ilić
Subject(s): Anthropology
Published by: Balkanološki institut - Srpska akademija nauka i umetnosti
Keywords: anthropological linguistics; minority; authoritative discourse; ethnic identity; interethnic marriages; Serbs in Hungary

Summary/Abstract: Drawing on the field research conducted in the Serbian community in Szigetcsép, Hungary, the paper examines interlocutors’ oral discourse on interethnic marriages. Until the Second World War, the Serbs in Hungary, rural communities in particular, mainly practised endogamy. In the postwar era, however, they tended to be among the minority groups with the highest rate of exogamic marriages. Consequently, the interviewees established discourse links between “interethnic marriages”, “loss of native language” and “fear of identity loss”. The analytical focus is on the interlocutors’ internal dialogism between the authoritative word of the ancestors and autobiographical assertions.

  • Issue Year: 2010
  • Issue No: 41
  • Page Range: 33-53
  • Page Count: 22
  • Language: English