Wang Dong University of Pécs 82077529@qq.com 1. Introduction
For political and economic reasons in Hungary and China in the early 1990s, a considerable number of Chinese immigrants swarmed into Hungary, hence Hungary became a large Chinese community hub in Europe (Nyíri, 1997).
According to figures from the Immigration and Naturalization Office (2010), there were 11,000 legal Chinese residents in Hungary at the time. The current figure is estimated between 20,000 and 30,000, most of them living in Budapest (as cited in Népszabadság, 30 April 2010). Against this backdrop, contacting and socializing with people in Chinese and Hungarian linguistic settings is a frequent occurrence for immigrants. The participants in this study live in Chinese communities in Hungary and use at least two languages. My aim is to study what roles their languages play in the immigrants’ socialization process.
2. Literature review
The Hungarian government issued a liberal immigration policy in early 1990s that stimulated the flourishing period of Chinese immigration to Hungary (Nyíri, 1997). Under the increasingly worsening Chinese political and economic circumstances in the wake of Tienanmen in 1989, qualified and even highly qualified senior officials, experts, elites, and active entrepreneurs escaped China in large numbers to Hungary with no visa requirement for citizens of China (Nyíri, 1997). In the early 1990s, the free market economy and prosperous economic development attracted around 40,000 Chinese immigrants (Nyíri, 2001). Then, the government tightened immigration rules and introduced visa obligations, which resulted in a drop in the total number of Chinese. The Chinese community in Hungary was about 9,000 strong in 2007 (Hárs, 2009).
But now, according to figures from the Immigration and Naturalization Office (2010), there are 11,000 legal Chinese residents in Hungary at present. The real figure is estimated at 20,000, even 30,000, most of whom live in Budapest.
Socialization as a term is used to describe different stages at which individuals acquire the knowledge, language, social skills, and value to conform to the norms, customs and ideologies, required for integration into a group or community throughout the life courses (Clausen, 1968). As Macionis (2010) stated, “Socialization is… the means by which social and cultural cultural are attained” (p. 104).
Language socialization is concerned with socialization through the use of language and socialization to use language (Schieffelin & Ochs, 1986); its study emerged in the 1980s and focused on children’s L1 acquisition through interactions between caregivers and children and the focus still remains a heated topic today (Bayley & Langman, 2011; Demuth, 1986; Kulick & Schieffelin, 2004). According to Lave and Wagner (1991), there are two types of language socialization. Primary language socialization occurs in children in a particular culture, whereas secondary language socialization occurs as an individual enters a new sociocultural setting, a new profession or an educational program, acquiring a new language and assumes a new role in society. Today, the research focus has extended to second language (L2) acquisition in the classroom (Bayley & Langman, 2011; Cekaite, 2007; Duff, 2002; Harklau, 2003). Language is acquired and used through interactions in specific contexts.
As Watson-Gegeo (2004) stated, “there is no context-free learning” (p. 340).
When novices enter into a new community via language and are socialized through language in the local context, it is accepted that the novices recognize themselves as members in a social group with culturally grounded social beliefs, values, and expectations (Cole & Zuengler, 2003; Kulick & Schieffelin, 2004;
Ochs, 1986; Watson-Gegeo, 2004). However, they will also confront cross-cultural communication hardship in the process of L2 socialization. As Ochs (2002) claimed, “in cross-cultural communication, commonalities assist novice second language acquirers who venture across geographical and social borders.
Alternatively, cross-cultural differences often thwart the language socialization of novices trying to access second cultures...” (p. 114). Resistance to adaption and acculturation will negatively impact the L2 learners’ progress in L2 socialization (Katz, 2000).
Linguistic resources possess symbolic power (Bourdieu, 1991). In the words of Pavlenko (2001a), “symbolic power can be converted into economic and social capital by providing access to more prestigious form of education, desired positions in the workforce or social mobility ladder” (p. 123). Based on Bourdieu’s theory, Norton (2000) stated that “power relations play a crucial role in social interactions between language learners and target language speakers”
(p. 12), which means target language speakers always control both material and linguistic resources in L2 learning contexts.
Language socialization for novices or newcomers participating in new social and linguistic practices is far from being a one-way process (Shi, 2006). Thus, for most adult cross-cultural newcomers, they should integrate their deep-rooted preconceptions framed in primary socialization in their original cultures into the host secondary language socialization contexts (Pavlenko 2001c; Pavlenko &
Lantolf 2001; Schecter & Bayley 2004).
Gardner (1985) proposed a socio-educational model which emphasizes the role of attitudes towards L2 acquisition in the field of language learning motivation. Two types of motivational orientation were identified: integrative orientation: aiming to interact and to socialize with local members of the L2 community through languages; and instrumental orientation: being motivated
by practical needs, such as getting a job, achieving an academic goal, career advancement (Gardner, 2001).
A task-based approach may interpret why immigrants and their children have to learn the language of the host community by taking learners’ language needs into consideration. The answer is determined by what he/she needs to with the language in terms of raising their chances of seeking a proper job, functioning more efficiently in the workplace, achieving academic attainment, getting better acquainted with their neighbors (Van Avermaet & Gysen, 2006).
In order to achieve academic attainment, Chinese parents tend to provide everything they have for their children (Chan, 2005). Zhong and Zhou (2011) asserted that education is a tool for social upward mobility in Chinese culture.
Most Chinese parents are so concerned about their children’ s achievement that they consider getting the entrance into universities to be the best way to prove success and to outperform others (Kipnis, 2011).
Immigrants are motivated by acculturation and upward socioeconomic mobility in host country in order to assimilate into and to increase the opportunities of contact with the majority group. As Massey (1985) claimed,
“acculturation implies an achievement-oriented outlook that reinforces the link between social and spatial mobility. Upwardly mobile immigrants seek out neighborhoods with better schools, more prestige, and richer amenities, places where natives tend to predominate” (p. 330).
Alba and Nee (2003) pointed out that housing is a key to assimilation. Better housing is a symbol of significant socioeconomic achievement and residential (or spatial) integration into a local neighborhood (Logan et al., 2002). The success of Chinese merchants’ business abroad, to a large extent, is heavily reliant on the family’s hard work. Those Chinese merchants focus on two kinds of family businesses, shops and restaurants (Chen, 2003).
According to Nyíri (2006), Chinese parents in Hungary typically see English-language education as a means of moving up in society and as an instrument of that in space: towards studying in Britain or the US.
Consequently, the quality of education at their children’s Hungarian school does not appear to most Chinese parents to be particularly important, and while they generally expect their children to bring home good marks, they rarely attempt to inform themselves thoroughly about what is happening at the school (Nyíri, 2006). At the outset of the research (Nyíri, 2006), they had expected that the public schools which migrant children enrolled in would influence their social integration later on. Interestingly, they found that upwardly mobile migrant families preferred their children to move to English-language schools no matter what their initial experience and level of achievement had been at the Hungarian school. This is particularly striking at the secondary level. Nyíri (2006) found few migrant children in state-run secondary schools even in those areas that had a strong migrant presence at the primary level. In Hungary, this phenomenon is most salient among the Chinese, one of the largest migrant groups that is also the most transnational in character (Nyiri, 2003).
Contemporary research on residential assimilation is rooted in Massey’s (1985) model of spatial assimilation which describes an immigrant or ethnic
group move from a segregated group and into a community that is primarily dominated by the ethnic majority. If their economic status improves, an immigrant or ethnic group will move away from their initial ethnic enclave to an ethnic majority dominated neighborhood (Massey, 1985; Murdie, 2010;
Pamuk, 2004)
Most immigrants from neighboring countries set foot on Hungarian soil and then settle in Budapest, which is the capital of Hungary, a strong economic center. The proportion of immigrants (the legal resident immigrant population) was 2.5 times higher in Budapest than in the country, on average. In Budapest, the proportion of Chinese immigrants accounted for 10 per cent of the whole immigrant population of the city (Hárs, 2009, Based on the results of the Localmultidem project). In Budapest, residential assimilation is scarce, while segregation between immigrants and locals is remarkable, although foreigners live scattered in all parts of the city. The 8th district of Budapest holds the biggest part of the immigrant communities. The area also hosts the biggest Chinese market of the country. Asian and Chinese as well as African immigrants live in the middle and lower status slum area of the district (Hárs, 2009, based on the results of the Localmultidem project).
The foreign business and different enterprises, such as Chinese, Arab, and Turkish retail shops and fast food restaurants and the biggest Chinese market of Hungary, are remarkable. Since there was great demand for cheap goods both in Hungary and other Eastern European countries, the market developed rapidly in the middle of the 1990s. Today, dominant Chinese merchants can be found everywhere in Hungary (Hárs, 2009, based on the results of the Interreg project).
3. The study
3.1 Research questions
Chinese Immigrants and their offspring venture into a new sociocultural and linguistic environment and face challenges on all fronts. After talking with several Chinese immigrants who had been in Hungary for at least ten years and now do business in Pécs, I became interested in their stories, so I decided to elicit information on a couple of areas that they are trying to make progress in, including their children’s educational attainment, residential assimilation with the locals, their conversational exchanges with native speakers of Hungarian in the workplace, and economic integration, the way they make a living in Hungary.
In order to understand the role languages play in their socialization processes, this qualitative study will probe into four families in a Hungarian linguistic environment and discuss the analysis of and reasons for what accounted for their experience of socialization and using of different languages.
The study was sought to explore the relationship between the roles of language and socialization. Therefore, the answers to the following questions are targeted:
1. How do the immigrants perceive the roles of languages (Chinese, Hungarian, English) in their residential community?
2. How do the immigrants perceive the roles of languages (Chinese, Hungarian, English) in their workplace?
3. How do the immigrants perceive the roles of languages (Chinese, Hungarian, English) in their children’s education?
3.2 Participants
Basic demographic information (e.g., age, gender, language proficiency, ethnic identity); economic mobility (e.g., economic background or the respondent’s education or the current job); geographic mobility (present neighborhood of residence) are collected from four Chinese families and two individuals.
Participant 1: Liu came to Hungary with his wife for the sake of seeking opportunities in 2003. They reside in Harkány (near Pécs) and their daughter is 5 years old. At the time of the study in 2015, he could understand and speak general Hungarian, but he was not able to read or and write. They run a couple of clothes retail shops in Pécs.
Participant 2: Liang arrived in Hungary with his wife seeking new business opportunities in 2000. They live in Kozármisleny, Pécs and have a 7-year old daughter. He could understand and speak general Hungarian language. He is not capable of reading and writing. He and his wife manage two restaurants in Pécs.
Participant 3: Feng followed his wife to Hungary after they got married in 2006. They have a 7-year old daughter. His wife came earlier in 1999. They met through a match-maker when his wife went back to China in 2006. He is an optical wholesale merchant. They live in Budapesti út. He knows nothing about Hungarian language except basic greeting expressions and numbers.
Participant 4: Zhao came to Hungary in 2004 for the family reunion with her husband. They are clothes wholesale merchants. Her son is 13 years old. She could only speak specific Hungarian language on clothes (price and materials).
They live in Kőbányai út in Chinatown.
Participant 5: Wang, a single, has been in Hungary for 5 years. She was posted by the Confucius Institute Headquarters (Hanban) as a Chinese teacher to Hungary. She has a B.A degree in Chinese and her Hungarian language proficiency is B1. She lives near her workplace in the vásárcsarnok.
Participant 6: Guo, 50 years old, has been in Hungary for two years. Before coming, he was a Chinese teacher at Beijing Foreign Studies University. He could only speak a little Hungarian and lives close to his workplace.
3.3 Instrument
Data for this study were obtained using semi-structured interviews, which were conducted in Pécs and Budapest. I interviewed each interviewee once, and each interview lasted about 30 minutes. The interview is comprised of 18 questions.
The researcher asked participants to describe their expectations, family needs, language proficiency, how to manage to live in Hungary, experience in socialization and in using Hungarian. All interviews were conducted in Chinese, and audio-recorded on a mobile phone.
3.4 Procedure
This study applied a qualitative research method. Qualitative research aims to deeply understand the meaning behind individuals’ interactions with a given event or object (Creswell, 2007; Merriam, 2009). Before the data collection, the author carefully organized and proofread the questions in terms of the participants’ family needs, language proficiency, expectations, how to manage to live in Hungary, experience in socialization and in using Hungary. Then, the author revised those items with his supervisor’s feedback. First, the researcher identified two familiar Chinese merchants and then made an appointment to interview in a Chinese restaurant in Pécs. Second, the researcher went to Budapest to collect data with another two familiar Chinese merchants and with a teacher (Wang), who was introduced by the researcher’s classmate from a Hungarian-Chinese school. Fortunately, Guo offered to participate in the interview.
4. Results and discussion
4.1 Process of language acquisition
The adult respondents’ accounts of language acquisition methods can be grouped into two categories: (1) informal situations at workplace where they were forced and motivated to learn language and culture (2) formal higher educational context that happened in language-training classes both in Beijing Foreign Studies University and ELTE University.
Although the immigrants have been in Hungary for at least ten years, from their narratives it is clear that they learned the language in an informal context (working context). The other two individuals who are from Confucius Institute Program learned Hungarian in a classroom setting. On the whole, it seems that there are some similarities and differences among the four families and two individuals by their stories happened in both contexts:
My wife and I learned Hungarian by using indigenous methods taught by our predecessors. We also collected detailed Hungarian linguistic materials provided by our predecessors. For example, we
used Chinese pinyin to imitate and to produce the pronunciation of Hungarian words. (Liu and Liang)
My husband and I learned the language by speaking to my employees in my company, but my language competence is only limited to the working place. I did not know any other words if they are not related to clothes. (Zhao)
I am not able to speak any Hungarian words except basic everyday expressions, “Helló”, “Szia”, “KÖSZÖNÖM”, “várjon”, “Kérem, segítsen nekem válaszolni a telefont” and numbers for business (egy, kettő, három, négy...). Although I have been in Hungary for ten years, I don’t want to learn the language. My wife has been in Hungary for 17 years and she has received an education form a local vocational school. She could speak very well, hence when I have to use Hungarian on some occasions alone, I would call my wife to answer the phone. (Feng)
Before I came here, I received culture and language training at Beijing Foreign Studies University. After I arrived, I learned Hungarian at the University of Loránd for ten months. I taught in Confucius Institute at the University of Loránd for half a year and then I have been teaching in Magyar-Kinai Ket Tanitasi Nyelvu Atalanos Iskola for four years. I have a B1 level Hungarian proficiency certificate. (Wang)
Before I came here, I received culture and language training at Beijing Foreign Studies University. After I arrived, I learned the Hungarian at the University of Loránd for 10 months. (Guo)
In these narratives, all the respondents mention specific reasons for learning Hungarian. On the one hand, we could report the results that differences in the linguistic gains made by formal setting learners and informal setting learners are apparent. One was a regular university classroom situation, the other was primarily situated in workplaces. On the other hand, all the participants complained about the difficulties in pronunciation, particularly the “Ö”, “r”,
“sárgarépa” and “retek”. Moreover, it is difficult to distinguish the “t”, “d”, “g”,
“k”, “b” and “p”. They are always confused by collocation, word form variation (verb to adjective) and grammar.
Apparently, those who are not literate know that acquisition of Hungarian is a great advantage to survival in this country. Most of them adapt their own language use in order to foster expected linguistic competencies in their business and their children, while a few of them are reluctant to entail themselves into the sociolinguistic milieu. Also, they are under pressure to feed their families and do not have time to receive formal training in Hungary.
4.2 Children’s language learning in formal education
My daughter was born in Hungary. She is five years old now.
Besides Chinese and Hungarian. She also learns German and English. I think English and Chinese would be the focus for her in the future. (Liu)
My daughter was born in Hungary. She is 7 years old now. Besides Chinese and Hungarian. She also learns English. (Feng)
My daughter came to Hungary when she was five years old. She learned the language at kindergarten. It has been three years that I drive her to a local family to learn Hungary after she finishes school every afternoon. I also employ an English tutor to teach her English on every Saturday morning. (Liang)
My son is 13 years old now. He came to Hungary in 2006 when he was 4 years old. He attended the local kindergarten for 2 years in Hungary and then we sent him back to China to receive education.
Because we want him to learn mother tongue. When he was in China, he learned in a Chinese-English bilingual school. He has been in China until he was in 4th grade. Then, he came to Hungary again in 2012. During the 4 years’ period in China, he has totally lost his memory of Hungarian language, hence he has to attend an English program school. He is not able to speak Hungarian and not willing to learn it. Also, we do not want him to learn the Hungarian. (Zhao) Parents are linguistically incompetent, not capable of providing their children with the sorts of linguistic socialization necessary to their future social and economic survival; therefore, schools take on the responsibility for children’s language socialization. Hence children have more access to linguistic resources, and are thus likely to acquire them faster and effectively than their parents.
Because we want him to learn mother tongue. When he was in China, he learned in a Chinese-English bilingual school. He has been in China until he was in 4th grade. Then, he came to Hungary again in 2012. During the 4 years’ period in China, he has totally lost his memory of Hungarian language, hence he has to attend an English program school. He is not able to speak Hungarian and not willing to learn it. Also, we do not want him to learn the Hungarian. (Zhao) Parents are linguistically incompetent, not capable of providing their children with the sorts of linguistic socialization necessary to their future social and economic survival; therefore, schools take on the responsibility for children’s language socialization. Hence children have more access to linguistic resources, and are thus likely to acquire them faster and effectively than their parents.