In the Footsteps of the Swabians Cover Image

A svábok nyomában
In the Footsteps of the Swabians

The Linguistic Landscape in Bačka

Author(s): Katalin Hegedűs
Subject(s): Language and Literature Studies
Published by: Филозофски факултет, Универзитет у Новом Саду
Keywords: linguistic landscape; Danube Swabians; assimilation

Summary/Abstract: In my study, I investigate the remaining traces of the language of German settlers in today’s area of Bačka. I have visited eighteen towns and villages, which had a majority German population during the settlers of the Danube Swabians (German: Donauschwaben). I want to show how the German language appears in the linguistic landscape of cities in these once almost purely Swabian localities, respectively, I deal with the German aspects of the research of the linguistic landscape. I focus mainly on the inscriptions and cultural symbols of the community, but during the fieldwork it turned out that they were missing in most places, so cemeteries became the focus of my research, where the linguistic context and name formation of inscriptions can be studied diachronically. As after the Second World War the number of Germans was drastically reduced, a certain form of linguistic landscape was found exclusively in the cemeteries of the former Swabian communities, while sometimes not even there.

  • Issue Year: 2021
  • Issue No: 1
  • Page Range: 41-56
  • Page Count: 16
  • Language: Hungarian