Abstract: The ways diasporic groups emerge and diasporic identities are constructed have recently become important research topics in sociolinguistics. However, these works have not paid sufficient attention to the spatial-temporal configurations of diasporic imaginations. In this article, I intend to shed light on the ways differing diasporic imaginations are inscribed on what kind of language-related diasporic activities are created by the diasporic subjects. To answer this question, I draw on the data of an ethnographically informed critical sociolinguistic study of diasporization among Hungarians in Catalonia that I conducted between 2018 and 2022. In the analysis, I compare the chronotopic figures appearing in the life journey narratives of Hungarians in Catalonia with the ways the ideal diasporic subject was imagined in the activities of two salient diasporic organizations. The article points to the fact that diasporic imaginations do not only contain moral guidelines on how diasporic subjects should behave, but they are also determined by the time and the space diasporic subjects inhabit. PubDate: Sun, 10 Dec 2023 00:00:00 GMT
Abstract: The paper analyses intercultural communication problems in tourism enterprises of Latvia, Lithuania, and Sweden. It gives an overview of intercultural theories and their application to the characteristics of employees in three countries. The methodology includes both primary and secondary types of research: analysis of scientific literature and qualitative research. Twelve semi-structured interviews were conducted in three countries. The results show cultural peculiarities typical to each country and provide possible solutions to intercultural problems. The research aims to examine intercultural communication problems in tourism and hospitality enterprises and to identify types of strategies and actions required to develop intercultural communicative competence and to solve intercultural communication problems. The article provides company profiles, describes intercultural difficulties encountered and the designed employee-assessment questionnaire. The research findings may be of interest to tourism industry representatives and higher education institution stakeholders, including academic personnel and students who study intercultural communication as an important discipline in the tourism faculty. PubDate: Sun, 10 Dec 2023 00:00:00 GMT
Abstract: Anna Vörös’s collection of short stories, Vadoma (2022), offers a completely novel perspective on refugees in contemporary Hungarian literature. The collection focuses on Vadoma, a young refugee girl of Syrian origin, who is the first-person narrator of most of the short stories. The reader can follow the young girl’s path from Aleppo to Budapest as she faces dilemmas and problems. The main issue of our hero is the fact that she is stuck between two worlds, as her old life and city of origin do not exist anymore, but Budapest has yet to become her home. Her mother tongue and words are no longer enough to express her experiences, but she has not learnt a new language yet. Mariangelo Pallodino’s concept of “islandment”, which refers to landing without arrival, expresses Vadoma’s situation perfectly. The present study examines whether Anna Vörös’s short stories can be read in the context of refugee literature, and it looks at how the figure of the refugee appears in them. Special attention is paid to the themes of cultures, religions, languages, and the in-betweenness of identities. PubDate: Sun, 10 Dec 2023 00:00:00 GMT
Abstract: In this study, we wish to debate upon some aspects regarding the lexical and semantic implications of ethnonyms. We aim to analyse the origin and semantics of one of two lexemes used by Romanians to refer to Hungarians: bozgor. Besides a meta-analysis of the term (its emergence, meaning), we also refer to archaic usages and meanings (buzguroi, bozga, bozga, bâzga, etc.). We discard previous theories regarding the meaning and origin of the lexeme. Bozgor is a word that is considered an instance of verbal abuse, mockery, or insult, which displays a significant amount of collectively formed, pejorative connotation. Our hypothesis is that it comes from the Hungarian bodza, in its archaic form and meaning (‘border forest’). Bozgor in its earlier versions came to designate, through semantic extension, ‘inhabitant of the border forest’, ‘Hungarian’. The associative meanings which led to the emergence of its present pejorative status (as an ethnic slur) appeared later. The roots we analyse in the article all share a common denominator of meaning and all have led to a large number of words related to the semantic field of forest both in Romanian and in Hungarian. PubDate: Sun, 10 Dec 2023 00:00:00 GMT
Abstract: The culture and mentality of a nation is formed in a process of interaction between individual and environment, and, consequently, its behaviour can be influenced by the changes of the social and physical environment. Politics is one factor in this process, as it uses power to control people’s thinking and behaviour through various instruments and techniques, and in this way, it can be regarded as a governmental extension on human actions. Using an imagological approach, the article’s purpose is to highlight that oppression, along with political discourse, shaped the mindset of the Soviet people. Also, the regime attempted to shape Soviet society in order to achieve the image desired. The Soviet political apparatus was based on oppression, the technique of repetition, and the role models highlighted by the regime. All the measures taken influenced the mentality of the Soviet people and, implicitly, led it to a transformation and, later, an adaptation because people had to comply with all the rules, laws, and measures taken by the Communist Party. This will be analysed in the first book published in Romania by Vasile Ernu, Născut în URSS [Born in the USSR], and in two works by Svetlana Alexievich, namely The Unwomanly Face of War and Chernobyl Prayer. By analysing these works, the reader learns how a society, its culture and mentality can be influenced by the social and physical environment. The three works present the transition from fiction to the non-fiction category, portraying authentic experiences and depicting the tangible impacts on people. PubDate: Sun, 10 Dec 2023 00:00:00 GMT
Abstract: The aim of my research study is to identify the barriers that cross-cultural and interracial couples are confronted with and the ways they try to overcome these potential obstacles in order for their marriage to work, with a focus on Romanian–Korean couples (Romanian wives and Korean husbands). At stake are many aspects pertaining to culture such as religious or ideological beliefs (Christianity vs. Confucianism), individualism vs. collectivism, egalitarian vs. non-egalitarian treatment of women, the language adopted by the spouses, family expectations, as well as the discrimination of bi-racial children.The hypothesis underlying the study is that no matter how much the spouses love each other, any difference in values, practices, and behaviours can create problems. Derived from this hypothesis, the following research questions will be addressed in the study: (a) Which particular cultural issues may cause (more) frictions in international, interracial marriages' (b) What steps are taken and by which partner in order to solve the possible culturally triggered problems that appear in their relationship' (c) Are there any advantages to international, interracial marriages'To provide answers to these questions, 7 Romanian–Korean couples have been subjected to a semi-structured interview. The information provided by the respondents has been analysed within the framework of “thematic analysis”, defined by Berelson (1952: 18) as “a research technique for the objective, systematic, and quantitative description of the manifest content of communication. PubDate: Sun, 10 Dec 2023 00:00:00 GMT
Abstract: The paper is focused on the sociolinguistic study of borrowings used in twenty-first century American literature to bring out their potential to translate status and high social position of characters. The study is aimed at proving that borrowings are socially charged and function in speech as indices of socially privileged layers of society. The study of modern British novels by Jeffrey Archer carried out earlier revealed four categories of borrowings, serving to represent upper-class characters: 1) terms, 2) a pair of synonymous words of Germanic and foreign origin, 3) U-class words, and 4) loan words used ironically. The study of American novels by Amor Towles A Gentleman in Moscow (2016) and Rules of Civility (2012) allows us to verify this classification and expand it by adding two more categories: 5) a pair of synonymous words of Germanic and foreign origin, like in group 2 but with switched social connotations, and 6) a pair of borrowings, one explaining the meaning of the other. The analysis has proved that borrowings in American, like in British literature, explicitly or implicitly translate the social status of a character. The question to answer is whether classes 5 and 6 have universal or culturally specific nature. Further research is therefore required to shed light on this very subtle use of borrowings in speech. PubDate: Sun, 10 Dec 2023 00:00:00 GMT
Abstract: The study of authenticity in sociolinguistics has questioned the notion of the authentic speaker or previous interpretations of place, and it rather focuses on how the social functioning of authenticity is “mediated by and expressed through language” (Lacoste et al. 2014: 4) in different socio-cultural contexts. In linguistic ethnography, the researcher’s positionality also becomes subject to analysis, especially when this has a direct influence on the data obtained. Through the excerpts from interviews conducted at a festival, I aim to discuss the sociolinguistic features of authenticity in the context of the Hungarian–Hungarian encounters. Moreover, the cultural values attributed to the different ways of speaking the Hungarian language are also articulated in these interviews. PubDate: Sun, 10 Dec 2023 00:00:00 GMT
Abstract: In this paper, I present a possible interdisciplinary, predominantly linguistic reading of the literary text, taking as a starting point the work of Andrei Dósa entitled Multă forţă şi un dram de gingăşie [Lots of Power and a Touch of Gentleness], published in 2021 by Polirom Publishing House. This way of re-reading allows us to go beyond the basic narrative structure of the text and focus on the underlying meanings constituted by the language used in the shaping of local colour. In the contextualization of the narrative thread, in the case of this novel, translanguaging strategies appear, which are analysed in relation to the evolution of the main character and the constitution of his own identity in relation to the Other. The specificity of the artistic processing of the spoken language, the way in which the complementary activation of languages becomes a tool for characterization, and the creation of local colour can provide stable reading references even for texts written in other languages. In this case, the activation of lexemes, phraseological units, culturemes, quotations from Hungarian (predominantly) and English in the literary text written in Romanian support the presentation of the steps of the individual’s self-definition in finding the local specificity under the imprint of globalization. The present study explores the significance of the secondary semantics of bilingual situations in the architecture of literary texts in general and, at the same time, provides a possible way of re-reading the text by following the processes of individualization of the literary transfiguration of bi- or multilingual existence in the case of a contemporary novel. PubDate: Mon, 27 Nov 2023 00:00:00 GMT
Abstract: The commentary as a journalistic genre that presents and comments on current events is characterized by intersubjective positioning, whereby the author constructs meaning, seeking alignment or, on the contrary, expressing disalignment with a putative audience. In line with the appraisal theory as developed by Martin and White (2005), which follows the Bakhtian dialogic perspective, according to which utterances and propositions are intersubjectively charged, the paper aims to describe the linguistic means of engagement, one of the central elements of this theory. Engagement is concerned with how the author expresses authorial voice and how s/he negotiates meaning with the readers, opening up (dialogic expansion) or, on the contrary, closing the dialogic space (dialogic contraction). In this sense, the linguistic means of engagement, such as modality, hedging and boosting devices, evidentiality, are understood to transcend the functions attributed to them within a truth-conditional framework, namely epistemic status and reliability of knowledge, and are seen as means by which the author entertains or rejects alternative voices and opinions. Taking this into consideration, the paper intends to analyse a few selected commentaries on the war situation in Ukraine found on the online platform of The Rand Corporation, a global policy think tank that performs research and conducts evaluations of various topics. It analyses the linguistic means of dialogic positioning, focusing on how the authors negotiate the dialogic space with the audience; while presumably all forms of intersubjective positioning can be found in the texts, it is expected that certain forms of engagement will outnumber others. As all commentaries can be found on the website of the above mentioned corporation, the question also arises as to what extent commentaries show similarity with respect to engagement, thereby expressing, albeit indirectly, a certain standpoint with respect to the Ukrainian warfare. PubDate: Mon, 27 Nov 2023 00:00:00 GMT
Abstract: Football has been related to various fields of linguistics, and linguistic landscape (LL) research is no exception. The study examines how football fans in a linguistically, culturally, and ethnically diverse region claim the club and the stadium as their own space in the process of reterritorialization (Monaghan 2020), due to numerous linguistic and semiotic resources. The research site is a Hungarian minority context in the public space of a football stadium in Sfântu Gheorghe, Romania. The linguistic landscape of football in Sfântu Gheorghe has never been explored in depth before. The study draws on a corpus based on photographs, videos taken inside and outside of the stadium, and data collected from the social media. The analysis shows that the presence of Hungarian in this particular LL indexes collective identity and describes the positioning strategies of the Hungarian minority speakers. The study also explores the processes of identity negotiation in which they are engaged. PubDate: Mon, 27 Nov 2023 00:00:00 GMT
Abstract: The Termini Online Hungarian–Hungarian Dictionary and Database describes the lexicon of the Hungarian language as spoken in the countries neighbouring Hungary. It is considered to be a general dictionary of present-day Hungarian. Each entry contains authentic example sentences to illustrate the use of the headword, making it possible to examine the special use of a word or construction in a grammatical and pragmatic context. The lexicographical database is edited online in eight countries. The editors of the dictionary are members of the Termini Hungarian Language Research Network. Online editing makes it possible for the dictionary to expand – even simultaneously – as a result of activity in eight countries. In the present study, the authors review the novelties and peculiarities of the dictionary in some detail, touching on the following topics: dictionary structure, IT support, database character, multimedia elements, and labelling system. PubDate: Mon, 27 Nov 2023 00:00:00 GMT
Abstract: With the development of medicine, the demand for the translation of medical texts has increased significantly. Translations play an important role in disseminating medical knowledge and new medical discoveries and are vital in the provision of health services to foreigners, tourists, or minorities. Translating medical texts requires a variety of skills. In our study, we assess the extent to which translation and interpretation students at Sapientia Hungarian University of Transylvania are able to translate medical texts from English into their mother tongue (Hungarian) and Romanian (the official language of the country). With the purpose of curriculum development, we examine whether the lack of medical knowledge affects the work of translators and what strategies can be used in translation in the absence of this expertise. We also examine our students’ attitude related to translating medical texts and becoming a medical translator. PubDate: Mon, 27 Nov 2023 00:00:00 GMT
Abstract: In this study, we aim to analyse the origin and semantics of one of the lexemes used by Romanians to refer to Hungarians: boanghin(a), also used as boanghen(a). Besides a meta-analysis of this ethnic slur (emergence, meaning, semantic shifts, and etymology), we also refer to literary works in which these terms have been used. The archaic boanghin, or boanghen seems to be a political construct which has the purpose of naming the enemy and personifying the evil. It is a typical case of verbal abuse, mockery, or insult which used to display a significant amount of collectively formed, pejorative connotation. Today it is old-fashioned, as it has been replaced by another slur, i.e. bozgor, which is going to be presented in a forthcoming study. PubDate: Mon, 27 Nov 2023 00:00:00 GMT
Abstract: Tourism and hospitality is a versatile and multicultural industry that comprises collaboration between members of different generations and cultures in creating and selling a tourism product. Business communication, including tourism and hospitality, does not refer only to business etiquette but is strongly rooted in culture, which influences people’s interaction and way of speaking. Hence, intergenerational and intercultural communication problems are inevitable. The current research presents the main findings of an exploratory research conducted in tourism and hospitality enterprises in Latvia, Lithuania, and Sweden in the period of 2020–2023. To discover intergenerational and intercultural communication differences leading to communication problems, semi-structured expert interviews with top-level management representatives in twelve tourism and hospitality enterprises were conducted. The paper analyses intergenerational and intercultural communication problems in tourism and hospitality enterprises, in particular those concerning the use of different languages and ways of communication to suggest means of eliminating the existing problems. The research findings confirm that differences between generations had an impact on the communication process. However, the cultural background and languages influenced people’s behaviour even more, and a great majority of conflicts arose because of difference in cultures, not generations. Suggestions for staff training to develop their intercultural communication skills taking into account generational differences have been proposed.1 PubDate: Mon, 27 Nov 2023 00:00:00 GMT
Abstract: Today’s employers expect university graduates to possess appropriate written ESP skills, which are most effectively taught through individualized ESP writing skills development. This paper provides an account of the ways a self-developed portfolio approach may be exploited to improve EFL learners’ ESP writing skills in a university environment. Through a quasi-experimental research design (N = 168), this project hypothesised that, and tested whether, our process-writing-based portfolio approach has a beneficial impact on participants’ ESP writing skills and examined if the portfolio approach in question was an effective means of improving participants’ ESP writing skills. For the testing of this hypothesis, a quasi-experimental research design was used with an experimental (N = 84) and a control group (N = 84), and participants’ test results were compared to examine the effectiveness of the applied portfolio approach. The findings of the study show that the portfolio approach applied in the scope of the present research project proves to be an efficient way of improving students’ ESP writing skills and can thus justifiably be applied at other institutions of higher education for improving such skills. PubDate: Mon, 27 Nov 2023 00:00:00 GMT
Abstract: Body part names are productive sources of metaphoric and metonymic expressions, which constitute coherent constructions in the languages. These cognitive cultural models are subconsciously known to all cultural community members (D’Andrade 1992). In the paper, I explore how culture influences the conceptualizations of body parts. The theoretical framework is Cultural Linguistics (Sharifian 2017), which investigates cultural conceptualizations in language. The data and analysis presented here consider the uses of ‘hand’ and ‘hair’ metaphors and metonymies in Hungarian archaic prayers, which represent a specific subculture mingling elements of the Christian religion with other (pagan or shamanistic) belief systems. The corpus of the study is Erdélyi’s collection of 321 archaic prayers (2013 [1976]), from which all representations of ‘hand’ and ‘hair’ are selected and conceptually analysed. The results show that 1) the figurative functions of the two body parts partly correspond to metaphors which are also found in secular Hungarian (e.g. hand for help, hand for care, hand for action); however, in the archaic prayers, they often take form in specific meanings (hand for help to get into heaven, hand for providence, hand for control); 2) their figurative uses strongly rely on cultural schemas which are attached to people and events. It is concluded that the body parts under consideration have fundamentally different cultural models in prayers than in secular usage. PubDate: Mon, 27 Nov 2023 00:00:00 GMT
Abstract: This paper examines the interference of the mother tongue, Serbian and Romanian, in the case of students of English for Tourism and Hospitality Purposes (ESP) at the university level in the field of verbal aspect. The first part of the paper focuses on the ways in which the category of aspect is defined and expressed in Serbian and Romanian in comparison to English. It was hypothesised that the native speakers of these three languages may conceptualize verbal aspect rather differently, especially given their inherent relevant linguistic differences, particularly with Serbian having a more complex system of grammaticalized aspectuality than English and Romanian. This paper analyses the difficulties that Serbian and Romanian ESP learners might encounter in attempting to comprehend the features specific to aspect in English and in capturing the different aspectual uses of English verbs. For this analysis, a study was carried out featuring a questionnaire on the specific context of aspectual uses, which was completed by the participating Serbian and Romanian ESP students. PubDate: Mon, 27 Nov 2023 00:00:00 GMT
Abstract: Discovering human reality requires a complex methodological culture. Besides the quantitative and qualitative paradigms, this accentuates the role of mixed methods, which is a way of generating complex meanings. This paper addresses the issues of using mixed methods from a theoretical and practical perspective, delineates the development of the theory of mixed methods, and speaks for the necessity of theoretical multilingualism and the use of mixed models. It also details the triangulation typologies that give overall information about the object, subject, process, and structure of the research, and then it presents the links between mixed methods and methodological triangulation. The paper is recommended to anyone who ventures to conduct empirical studies with methodological awareness. PubDate: Mon, 27 Nov 2023 00:00:00 GMT
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