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Members of the Slovene-speaking minority in Carinthia, Austria, have several "identities" at their disposal, ranging from the local to the supranational and including terms reflecting citizenship and language. We asked subjects from this minority which "identity labels" they felt most comfortable with. The results were largely as expected; they show a number of distinctions according to the age and educational level of the subjects, and in particular: the younger and the better-educated the subjects, the greater the preference for the labels "Carinthian Slovene" and "Slovene" rather than "Austrian" and "Carinthian". This suggests a positive future for the maintenance of Slovene identity and language in this province.
Keywords: Minority, identity, ethnicity, age difference, educational difference
"IDENTITETA" MANJSINSKIH SLOVENCEV NA AVSTRIJSKEM KOROSKEM
Pripadniki slovensko govorece manjsine na avstrijskem Koroskem imajo vec "identitet" hkrati, od lokalne do nadnacionalne in drugih identitet, ki odrazajo drzavljanstvo in jezik. Pripadnike manjsine smo vprasali, katere "identitetne oznake" so jim najbolj domace. Rezultati so bili pricakovani, saj kazejo precej razlik glede na starost in izobrazbo anketirancev. Glavna razlika: mlajsi in bolj izobrazeni dajejo prednost oznakama "koroski Slovenec" in "Slovenec" pred oznakama "Avstrijec" in "Korosec". To je nedvomno dobro znamenje za prihodnost ohranitve slovenske identitete in jezika v dezeli.
Kljucne be sede: manjsina, identiteta, etnicnost, starostne razlike, izobrazbene razlike
INTRODUCTION
The maintenance of a minority language depends on many factors, among them the attitudes of the speakers of the language; and one of the most important attitudes is speakers' feelings about themselves - their self-worth as minority individuals, their standing with relation to members of the majority, and so on. One large factor is their feeling of "identity" - the extent to which they identify themselves as part of, or separate from, the same community as the majority, and (in the case of Slovene-speakers in Austrian Carinthia, as of "over-the-border" minorities generally) the extent to which they identify themselves with the people who speak the same language on the other side of the border.
"'Identity' is a catch-all term of our times. It is an empty vessel which can be filled with almost any content," writes the anthropologist MacClancy (1993: 84); and the term is used not only in anthropology but also, with similar unrestraint, in sociology, psychology, literary analysis, and linguistics. Although...