Language and Literature paper by Fazakas, Noémi
Sapientia Hungarian University of Transylvania

The Construction of a New Minority: Language and Identity between the Two World Wars in Transylvania

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Abstract (max. 250 words):
“Keleti Újság” [‘Eastern Newspaper’] was a Hungarian daily newspaper published in Cluj-Napoca between 1918 and 1944, and is considered one of the most important periodicals of the period between the two World Wars. Covering a large range of topics, it also includes articles on the Hungarian language, as in 1936 Jenő Dsida, one of the most important poets of the period started a column (or a ‘movement’, as they called it) dedicated to the cultivation of the Hungarian language in Romania, entitled Anyanyelvünkért (‘For the protection of our mother tongue’). It published articles on the state of the community in the new political context, as well as overtly and covertly outlining attitudes towards the mother tongue and the language of the state that determined the way in which the new minority identity of the community was to be shaped. My paper discusses these ways in which the new minority was constructed in the articles and texts published in the Keleti Újság newspaper from the point of view of displacement and the issues of multi- and plurilingualism.


Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
Gál Noémi, PhD is 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.