{"title":"Political Discourse and Oppression – Influences on the Mentality and Culture of the Soviet Man","authors":"A. Arsene","doi":"10.2478/ausp-2023-0026","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2478/ausp-2023-0026","url":null,"abstract":"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.","PeriodicalId":37574,"journal":{"name":"Acta Universitatis Sapientiae, Philologica","volume":" 23","pages":"41 - 54"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138612075","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Language of Authenticity in Hungarian–Hungarian Encounters","authors":"Blanka Barabás","doi":"10.2478/ausp-2023-0029","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2478/ausp-2023-0029","url":null,"abstract":"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.","PeriodicalId":37574,"journal":{"name":"Acta Universitatis Sapientiae, Philologica","volume":"5 7","pages":"104 - 117"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138625339","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Diasporic Imagination and Chronotopes","authors":"Gergely Szabó","doi":"10.2478/ausp-2023-0030","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2478/ausp-2023-0030","url":null,"abstract":"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.","PeriodicalId":37574,"journal":{"name":"Acta Universitatis Sapientiae, Philologica","volume":"105 16","pages":"118 - 134"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138609043","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Between Two Worlds","authors":"Anikó Novák, Krisztina Kovács","doi":"10.2478/ausp-2023-0031","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2478/ausp-2023-0031","url":null,"abstract":"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.","PeriodicalId":37574,"journal":{"name":"Acta Universitatis Sapientiae, Philologica","volume":" 2","pages":"135 - 149"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138615168","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Deprecatory Ethnonyms: The Case of Bozgor","authors":"I. Nagy","doi":"10.2478/ausp-2023-0027","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2478/ausp-2023-0027","url":null,"abstract":"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.","PeriodicalId":37574,"journal":{"name":"Acta Universitatis Sapientiae, Philologica","volume":" 13","pages":"55 - 85"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138619705","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"How Culture-Specific Practices and Values May Influence International (Romanian–South Korean) Marriages","authors":"E. Buja","doi":"10.2478/ausp-2023-0025","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2478/ausp-2023-0025","url":null,"abstract":"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.","PeriodicalId":37574,"journal":{"name":"Acta Universitatis Sapientiae, Philologica","volume":" 1159","pages":"17 - 40"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138610081","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Lexicon of the Hungarian Culture in Transylvania Benő Attila & Péntek János (eds). 2022. Erdélyi magyar kulturális szótár. Sfântu Gheorghe: Anyanyelvápolók Erdélyi Szövetsége","authors":"Borbála Zsemlyei","doi":"10.2478/ausp-2023-0032","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2478/ausp-2023-0032","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":37574,"journal":{"name":"Acta Universitatis Sapientiae, Philologica","volume":"52 10","pages":"150 - 153"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138626882","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Social Implications of Borrowings","authors":"Tatiana A. Ivushkina","doi":"10.2478/ausp-2023-0024","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2478/ausp-2023-0024","url":null,"abstract":"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.","PeriodicalId":37574,"journal":{"name":"Acta Universitatis Sapientiae, Philologica","volume":"118 22","pages":"1 - 16"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138609501","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Intercultural Communication in Tourism Enterprises of Latvia, Lithuania, and Sweden during the COVID-19 Pandemic","authors":"Valerija Drozdova","doi":"10.2478/ausp-2023-0028","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2478/ausp-2023-0028","url":null,"abstract":"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.","PeriodicalId":37574,"journal":{"name":"Acta Universitatis Sapientiae, Philologica","volume":"12 20","pages":"86 - 103"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138625219","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Linguistic Landscape of Football. Reterritorialization in a Minority Setting","authors":"Enikő Biró","doi":"10.2478/ausp-2023-0018","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2478/ausp-2023-0018","url":null,"abstract":"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.","PeriodicalId":37574,"journal":{"name":"Acta Universitatis Sapientiae, Philologica","volume":"12 1","pages":"86 - 105"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139296946","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}