Mother tongue in the values among young people with the Slovak nationality in Croatia and Serbia
Mother tongue in the values among young people with the Slovak nationality in Croatia and Serbia

Summary/Abstract: Background: Mother tongue serves as a fundamental tool for transmission of basic cultural values between generations and at the same time it has an indispensable position in the individual hierarchy of values. For these reasons the study of the perception about the value attached to the mother tongue offers a special insight into the state of ethnic identity at the individual as well as at the group level. The role of adolescents as individual dynamic actors in a social and cultural setting, requires a formation of a value system, which is able to integrate their own personal experiences with shared practices, attitudes, and values of their surroundings, both, on microsocial (e.g. family, peer groups), and macrosocial (e.g. ethnic group, society) level. Aim: The objective of the present study is a) to test the differences/similarities between value systems of Slovak adolescents from three culturally different settings (in Serbia, in Croatia, and in Slovakia); b) to verify the hypothesis that ethnic values play (for members of ethnic minorities in mutual comparison) a more important role. Method: This article is a follow up to an earlier work focused on the values of the young Slovak minority members living in Hungary (Výrost, 2011). The empirical data was collected through questionnaires administered by interviewers. One part of the questionnaire contained 10 items of a short scale of values. In accordance with the results of a previous exploratory factor analysis, the scale consists of 3 factors: personal values (employment, education, health, family and property), ethnic values (mother tongue, nationality and religion), and social values (freedom and democracy). In 2016, 270 young Slovaks (aged 15-25) participated in the research: 121 (71 female and 50 male) members of a Slovak minority who learned Slovak language at school in Serbia, 49 (34 female and 15 male) members of a Slovak minority who learned Slovak language at school in Croatia, and for comparative reasons also 100 (63 female and 37 male) young Slovaks from the Slovak Republic. Results: The obtained value hierarchy in the three groups of participants reflects similarity – the most preferred values are “Health”, “Family”, and “Freedom”. The same configuration of the most preferred values was found also in previous research with a group of Slovak adolescents living in Hungary. The obtained results of the comparison of value profiles (Kruskal-Wallis test) partially confirmed our hypothesis that minority members (Slovaks in Serbia) will prefer ethnic values more: As far as the Slovaks from Croatia are concerned, their value profile was more or less identical to the Slovaks living in Slovakia. The apparent differences between the two Slovak minority groups value profiles and the need to get a more detailed answer on the raised question, led us to conduct two analyses of binary logistic regression models (in each groups separately) to analyse the influence of value preferences on the attitude to mother tongue usage. In each group (Slovak adolescents in Serbia and Slovak adolescents in Croatia), a set of 10 values was observed as a significant (chi squareRS = 34.223, p < 0,001; chi squareHR = 18.170, p < 0.042), but moderate – about 30% – (Cox & Snell’s RRS²= 0.399; Cox & Snell’s RHR²= 0.315) predictor of the attitude to the mother tongue usage. Ethnic values played an important, but different role in these relations; in the case of Slovak adolescents living in Serbia it is “Mother tongue” value preference which contributes most significantly to the prediction, while in the group of Slovak adolescents living in Croatia it is “Nationality” value preference. Conclusion: Languages do not have the same function in communities, and this fact is especially true for minority languages; ethnic minorities live in a societal bilingualism, in disglossia, and the status of minority language differs from country to country for many reasons. The collected data confirm the necessity to study not only the legal or “objective” position of the mother tongue in life of ethnic minorities, but also its personal reflections. Analysis of value systems can serve in this sense as an effective tool for gaining an insight into ongoing processes.

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