Identity (trans)formation in Croatian community in Burgenland

Abstract: Burgenland Croats are members of a Croatian minority whose ancestors left their homeland 500 years ago and settled in former West Hungary, Lower Austria, southern parts of Moravia and southern areas of today’s Slovak Republic. Today they mostly live in the Austrian prov-ince of Burgenland. Although they managed to preserve their language and culture for several centuries, in the last few decades the number of speakers has significantly decreased. Bur-genland Croatian is listed in the UNESCO Atlas of the World’s Languages in Danger, and the current situation poses many challenges for Burgenland Croats regarding their future. In our study of German-Croatian language contacts in Burgenland we have focused, among other things, on the question of identity in this Croatian community. The main objective was to examine the possibility of drawing some general conclusions regarding Burgenland-Croatian identity by means of reconstructing language biographies/narrative interviews of in-dividual speakers. The elicited data indicate that the age, place of birth and family back-ground, together with language, i.e. mother tongue, are the parameters which play the crucial role in the process of identity formation and the realisation of attitudes towards (multi)cul-tural identity. Language biographies proved to be a useful methodological tool when analys-ing the construction of (double) identity because both implicitly and explicitly, they reveal subjective reflections of the informants, since we wanted the study to elicit the real situation in Burgenland as much as possible.