Abstracts of Submitted Papers 2012

The Hungarian Language in Transylvania: Diaspora Existence and the Possibilities of Revitalization

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Abstract (max. 250 words):
The Hungarian Language in Transylvania: Diaspora Existence and the Possibilities of Revitalization

In my paper I aim to outline the present situation of the Hungarian language in Transylvania, the complexities of language shift and maintenance, as well as the possibilities of revitalization. One of the questions I wish to address is whether the Hungarian language can or cannot be considered endangered in Transylvania and thus in need of urgent help. I present the three types of demographic and linguistic situations of the Hungarians in Transylvania (hopefully using some of the data of the newest census): the compact territory of the Székely Land, the island situation as well as the diaspora situation of North-East and South Transylvania, where the number and proportion of the Hungarian minority is very low and thus it can be considered endangered. I connect these situations to Fishman’s Graded Intergenerational Disruption Scale which helps identify the level of endangerment as well as some actions that need to be done in order to reverse language shift.



Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
Gál Noémi, PhD is currently a lecturer at the Sapientia University of Marosvásárhely, at the Department of Humanities. She completed her university studies in 2003 at the Babeş–Bolyai University of Cluj-Napoca majoring in English language and literature and Hungarian language and literature. She received her Master’s degree in Irish Studies at the same university in 2004. She completed her doctoral studies in 2009, the title of her thesis being Language Revitalization. Theory, Methodology and Perspectives. Her main field of research is sociolinguistics and the revitalization of endangered languages. She has presented her results at numerous national and international conferences and workshops.

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Az utolsó szó keresése -- Jékely Zoltán, Szent György és a sárkány

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Abstract (max. 250 words):
Jékely Zoltán április 24-én, Szent György napján született, s talán éppen ezért nem találhatjuk különösnek, hogy a mesében és a néphitben egyaránt szereplő figura, Szent György, valamint a sárkány és a kettejük viszonya tematikájának, életművének jelölt vagy jelöletlen formában kardinális motívuma. Ez előadásom tárgya.


Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
Havas Judit irodalomtörténész, előadóművész felsőfokú tanulmányait az Eötvös Loránd Tudomány Egyetem Bölcsészettudományi Karán magyar-könyvtár szakon végezte. 1975 óta előadóművész. 2003-ban PhD fokozatot szerzett az ELTE Irodalomtörténeti Intézetében. Témavezetője Dr. Kenyeres Zoltán professzor volt. Jelenleg a Petőfi Irodalmi Múzeum tudományos főmunkatársa. 2006. március 15-én a Köztársasági Elnök a Magyar Köztársaság Érdemrend Lovagkeresztje kitüntetésben részesítette irodalmi munkássága elismeréseként.

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Látni, hallani a szöveget a romániai magyar audiovizuális médiában

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Abstract (max. 250 words):
Előadásomban hangsúlyt fektetek a rádióban és televízióban használt nyelvezetre és az elhangzó szöveg interpretálására, kommunikativítására. A beszéd általános jellemzéséből kiindulva, a megszólalás, megszólaltatás kérdését fejtegetem. Ezeket követi a szöveg és a hangzásforma kapcsolata, a műfaj és az akusztikus stílusideál kapcsolata, valamint a szöveg (mondatok) hangzásának (intonálásának) szerepe, hangsúlyt fektetve a szöveg és a szupraszegmentális eszközök kapcsolatára, a szöveg megszólaltatásakor. Ez a kérdés a rádió- és tévé-hírek szövegformájára és megfogalmazási, megszólaltatási gondjaira épül. Szó van a kommunikatív, informatív megfogalmazásról, az ún. kétarcú szerkezetről, a hírmondatok tagolásáról, a típushibákról, a hírek logikai felépítéséről és kommunikativításáról, mondhatóságáról. Mindezek aktuális példákkal vannak alátámasztva a Román Rádió Nemzetközi Szolgálatának Magyar Adásában és az RTV bukaresti Magyar Nyelvű Adásaiban elhangzott szavakkal, mondatokkal, szószerkezetekkel, valamint kérdésekkel.

Seeing, Hearing the Text, in the Hungarian Audio-Visual Mass-Media in Romania.

In my talk, I stress the importance of the use of language in the radio and television, and the interpretation of text, as a means of communication. Starting from the general description of speech, I develop the question of uttering words, the speech. These are followed by the written text, the of hearing, the link between the literary work and the ideal acoustic style, as well as the text (sentences), the role of intonation, underlying the importance of text and upper segments of means of communication, when uttering a word.
This question is lying on the form of text at the radio and Tv news declaration, uttering. It is about the creation of communication, information, “double faced” construction, about uttering of speakers, types of mistakes, about logistics of the news and communication of their message. All these are founded on examples from the Hungarian Department of the Romanian Radio, International Broadcasting section, and RTV Hungarian language broadcastings, words, sentences, word clusters and questions.



Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
Dr. Nagy Éva, jelenleg Államtitkári Kabinetigazgató, a bukaresti (Románia) Oktatási, Kutatási, Ifjúsági és Sport Minisztériumban, s magyar tanár (külső munkatárs) a Bukaresti Egyetem-Idegen Nyelvek Fakultása-Hungarológia Tanszékén és a bukaresti Ady Endre Elméleti Líceumban. A Bukaresti Egyetem-Idegen Nyelvek Fakultása-Hungarológia Tanszékén fejezte be PhD tanulmányait, a nyelvészet/média-kommunikáció terén, 2008-ban. Témavezetője dr. Murvai Olga professzor volt.
E-mail:eva.nagy@medu.edu.ro

Dr. Nagy Éva holds the positions of Chief of Cabinet, Under Secretary of State in Bucharest, and at the Ministry of Education, Research, Youth and Sport. She also teaches Hungarian at the Hungarology Department of the Faculty of Foreign Languages in Bucharest, and at the Ady Endre High School. She completed her PhD studies in languages/media in 2008; her coordinating Professor was Dr. Murvai Olga. Email: eva.nagy@medu.edu.ro

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Would-be Émigrés and Internal Exiles in Péter Nádas’s Parallel Stories

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Abstract (max. 250 words):
In my paper I would like to focus on three important characters in Péter Nádas’s monumental novel: János Kovách (also known as Hans von Wolkenstein), Ágost Lippay-Lehr and András Rott. The three of them are close friends, having spent a significant part of their lives abroad. All three of them work for the Hungarian counter-intelligence service, and are themselves secret agents. Because of their profession and family background and connections, they are privileged members of the nomenklatura. These three men are in many ways strangers to Hungary; they speak Hungarian with a foreign intonation, and have a disdain for ordinary Hungarians. What complicates their situation is that one of them (Kovách) is of aristocratic birth, and the other two are Jewish-born or half-Jewish. Yet Hungary is their home. There are important and highly interesting reflections in the book about the state of mind of these and other communist “internationalists”, so I would like to explore their “displaced” “internal exile” status.

One of the more likeable characters in the novel is an architect of great promise, Alajos Madzar, who is half Hungarian and half sváb, i.e., ethnic German, and forever wavers between his two identities. During his youth in the 1930s he planned to immigrate to America, but it didn’t happen, and he never became an important architect either. He remained a “would-be émigré”. Then there are the holdovers from the prewar elite and middle-class Budapest Jews who did not leave the country after the war or in ‘56. These people are either comforted by the past or tormented by it; what they cannot do is find their place in the present.



Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
Ivan Sanders is Professor Emeritus of English at Suffolk Community College, SUNY, and Adjunct Assistant Professor at Columbia University. He has also taught at the New School, New York University, New York Jewish Theological Seminary and Central European University. Sanders has written extensively on modern Hungarian literature in American as well as Hungarian journals. He has translated works by György Konrád, Péter Nádas, and other major Hungarian writers; for his translations, he was awarded a Soros Translation Award (1988), the Füst Milán Prize (1991), and the Déry Tibor Prize (1998). His reviews and articles have appeared in the New York Times Book Review, New Republic, Commonweal, Nation, and other periodicals.

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The Official Register of Hungarian Language Used in Transylvania

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Abstract (max. 250 words):
According to the Constitution of Romania the only official language of the country is the Romanian language. Yet, according to the legislation in force, in the public administration of those settlements in which the minority represents at least 20% of the population, the language of that minority may be used. Thus in some areas of the country Hungarian may also be used in the public administration. The problem is that the official register of Hungarian language in Romania is underdeveloped and thus the users encounter many problems which they try to solve by translating laws, acts and documents from Romanian to Hungarian. Unfortunately these translations are sometimes incorrect and unusable. The aim of the paper is to present the linguistic phenomena occurring in the administrative and official register of the Hungarian language used in Transylvania due to the translation of the above mentioned text types the source language of which was the Romanian language. The research is based on the data base elaborated as a result of an extended monitoring of the Hungarian electronic media in Transylvania. The project was realized in 2010 and 2011 by the researchers from Sapientia Hungarian University of Transylvania in cooperation with the researchers from Babeș‒Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania. My analysis will focus on the specificities of the Hungarian language used in the official, administrative and political discourse of the monitored electronic media.


Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
Dr. Sárosi-Márdirosz Krisztina-Mária is currently an assistant professor at the Sapientia University of Marosvásárhely, at the Department of Humanities. She completed her university degree in Hungarian language and literature and English language and literature at Babeș‒Bolyai University in 2002. She continued her studies at the same university and received her master’s degree in Hungarian linguistics in 2004. In 2009 she defended her PhD thesis with the title Problems of Translation in the case of the Language of Official Documents (regarding Romanian-Hungarian Relations) Her main field of research is translation studies focusing on the official translations and on the problems occurring in the domain of legal translation. She presented the results of her research in numerous national and international conferences.

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Major Themes In György Faludy's Poetry

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Abstract (max. 250 words):
The year after Faludy’s death I expected an avalanche of papers presented on the poet at the subsequent AHEA conference so I restricted my presentation to one aspect of his oeuvre, his concern about the environment and the way its deterioration threatened the future of mankind. Perhaps the poet’s death had caught some scholars off guard, because as it turned out, there were no other papers presented on his work. Now that a selection of my 123 Faludy translations is about to come out in an e-book form from The WriteDeal publishers under the title of “Silver Pirouettes” I would like to give a more general talk on every aspect of Faludy’s work from every period of his life, illustrating them with my translations that have appeared in 23 literary magazines in the US, UK, Canada and Austria. In order to conform to the theme of this upcoming 2013 conference I will again demonstrate the poets disillusionment with industry and the havoc it was wreaking on the environment, but in addition I will show another development that gave him cause to worry about the future: the general dumbing down of the people of the West, especially the younger generation. Preserving the past was also on his agenda; he had a deep commitment to Western Civilization and its roots in the Greco-Roman world, because he saw the past as a guide to the future. A people without a past had no future, he always maintained.


Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
Paul Sohar ended his higher education with a BA in philosophy and took a day job in a research lab while writing in every genre, publishing seven volumes of translations, including "Dancing Embers", his Kanyadi translations (Twisted Spoon Press, 2002). Now a volume of his own poetry (“Homing Poems”) is available from Iniquity Press. His latest “The Wayward Orchard”, was a Wordrunner Prize winner: www.echapbook.com/poems/sohar (2011). His Faludy translations are scheduled to be published by The WriteDeal. His prose work "True Tales of a Fictitious Spy" was published by SynergeBooks in 2006. He has given talks at AHEA and MLA conferences and lectures at Centennial College in NJ. His magazine credits include Agni, Kenyon Review, Rattle, Salzburg Poetry Review, Seneca Review, etc.

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Uncertain Suffix-Use in the Hungarian Electronic Media of Transylvania

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Abstract (max. 250 words):
The aim of the paper is to present the uncertainties of the use of suffixes in the Hungarian electronic media (radio and TV) of Transylvania. The research is based on the data base gathered as a result of an extended monitoring of the Hungarian electronic media in Transylvania. This project was realized with the cooperation of researchers from Sapientia Hungarian University of Transylvania and Babeș‒Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania in 2010 and 2011. The monitoring focused on the language use of reporters and presenters of Hungarian radio and TV stations in Transylvania, and included exclusively news and cultural programs.
The present paper focuses on the misuse of both derivative and inflexive suffixes (eg.: -ba/-be instead of -ban/-ben) and tries to determine the causes of why this may happen (eg.: in a bilingual context as Romanian influence, the emotions of live shows etc.).





Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
Dr. Zsemlyei, Borbála is currently a teaching assistant at the Department of Hungarian and General Linguistics,Babeș‒Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania. She completed her university degree in Hungarian language and literature and English language and literature at Babeș‒Bolyai University in 2000. She continued her studies at the same university and received her master’s degree in Hungarian linguistics in 2002. In 2009 she defended her PhD thesis with the title Diminutive Suffixes in Old Hungarian in Transylvania. Her main field of research is the old Hungarian language used in Transylvania. She presented the results of her research in numerous national and international conferences. She is one of the editors of the Transylvanian Hungarian Historical Dictionary (Erdélyi magyar szótörténeti tár).

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