Hungarian

Freedom of expression, hate speech, and models of personhood in Hungarian political discourse

by David Boromisza-Habashi

Boromisza-Habashi, D. (2007). Freedom of expression, hate speech, and models of personhood in Hungarian political discourse. Communication Law Review, 7, 54-74.

In this ethnography of communication study I will explore how the cultural concepts “freedom of expression/opinion”... more In this ethnography of communication study I will explore how the cultural concepts “freedom of expression/opinion” (véleménynyilvánítás szabadsága) and “hate speech” (gyűlöletbeszéd) function in a specific cultural discursive system, Hungarian political discourse. I will accomplish this goal through the analysis of situated interaction at a series of parliamentary committee meetings. The ethnographic data under consideration consists of instances in which members of the Hungarian Parliament discussed the implications of a bill proposing changes to the criminal code regarding hate speech. I will show that the freedom of expression as a cultural concept is inextricably linked with the concept of “the violation of human dignity” in situated political discourse. This linkage, however, becomes the site of conflict as it is interpreted in competing ways by those who see human dignity as the possession of persons-as-individuals and those who assign it to persons-as-members-of-communities. These models of personhood give rise to conflicting communal norms, and the norms animate conflicting proposals for sanctioning hate speech. My analysis joins a small but increasing body of field-level studies of the freedom of expression that approach the concept of free expression as a cultural construct.

Voice and moral accountability: Burlesque narratives in televised Hungarian political discourse

by David Boromisza-Habashi

Boromisza-Habashi, D. (2007). Voice and moral accountability: Burlesque narratives in televised Hungarian political discourse. SKY Journal of Linguistics, 20, 81-107.

The essay makes advances toward identifying the form and function of burlesque narrative as a discursive resource in... more The essay makes advances toward identifying the form and function of burlesque narrative as a discursive resource in broadcast interaction. It complements existing studies of burlesque in spoken discourse through the examination of situated interaction in a televised Hungarian political talk show (Sajtóklub). The study includes the analysis of a segment of interaction characterized as a bounded episode of interactionally managed burlesque narrative. Burlesque narratives are identified as narratives in which the speaker adopts a persona and performs imaginary actions in the ideological universe of an adversary that reveal the absurdity of that universe and the insidious motives of the adversary. The burlesque narrative emerges as a speech genre that speakers employ in the specific situational context of the political talk show and the discursive context of perceived political provocation (1) to render the adversary’s stance to a public issue absurd, (2) to mitigate their own accountability for the norm violation that this rendering may constitute in the eye of the lampooned adversary, (3) to create opportunities for participant affiliation by means of humor. The analysis also shows that in the extended context of Hungarian political discourse the burlesque narrative functions as a counter-discourse in opposition to a perceived dominant political discourse.

Dismantling the antiracist “hate speech” agenda in Hungary: An ethno-rhetorical analysis

by David Boromisza-Habashi

Boromisza-Habashi, D. (2011). Dismantling the antiracist “hate speech” agenda in Hungary: An ethno-rhetorical analysis. Text & Talk, 31, 1-19. doi:10.1515/TEXT.2011.001

In the context of Hungarian political discourse, critics of contemporary antiracist advocacy argue that the antiracist... more In the context of Hungarian political discourse, critics of contemporary antiracist advocacy argue that the antiracist “hate speech” agenda is motivated by carefully concealed political interests that pose a danger to the integrity of Hungarian society. The aim of the present article is twofold: to capture the themes and rhetorical strategies emerging from discursive challenges to the “hate speech” agenda, and to identify the cultural foundations of that rhetoric. The article identifies four themes in critical responses to the “hate speech” agenda: (i) the “hate speech” agenda is founded on the deliberate corruption of the Hungarian language; (ii) the “hate speech” agenda reveals that antiracists are pursuing an alien political utopia; (iii) the “hate speech” agenda is fraught with ideological inconsistency; and (iv) antiracist proponents of the “hate speech” agenda are themselves filled with hatred. Discursive manifestations of the four themes are analyzed for a shared cultural model of sociation and argumentative strategies. The article ends with a discussion of how findings may inform antiracist activism.

The cultural foundations of denials of hate speech in Hungarian broadcast talk

by David Boromisza-Habashi

Boromisza-Habashi, D. (2012). The cultural foundations of denials of hate speech in Hungarian broadcast talk. Discourse & Communication, 6, 3-20. doi:10.1177/1750481311427793

In Hungarian public talk, ‘hate speech’ (gyulöletbeszéd) is a term commonly used to morally sanction the talk of... more In Hungarian public talk, ‘hate speech’ (gyulöletbeszéd) is a term commonly used to morally sanction the talk of others. The article describes two dominant interpretive strategies Hungarian speakers use to identify instances of ‘hate speech’. Motivated by an interest in the observable use of the term, the author draws on speech codes theory to investigate how public speakers use the two competing meanings of ‘hate speech’ to achieve moral challenges and counter-challenges in broadcast talk. The author finds that Hungarian speakers accused of ‘hate speech’ can effectively accomplish denials in response to actual or anticipated normative challenges by opting for an alternative meaning of ‘hate speech’. The article concludes with a discussion of implications for speech codes theory, the discourse analysis of denials, and antiracist action.

Miénk itt a tér! A gyülekezési jog szabályozása Magyarországon

by Daniel Mikecz

published by IDEA think tank, March 2012

Joggal feltételezhetnénk, hogy demokratikus politikai rendszerekben a gyülekezési jog gyakorlásának nincs különösebb... more Joggal feltételezhetnénk, hogy demokratikus politikai rendszerekben a gyülekezési jog gyakorlásának nincs különösebb törvényi és adminisztratív akadálya, hiszen az olyan kollektív jog, amely a demokratikus berendezkedés alapját jelenti. Optimális körülmények között ez így is van, azonban olyan esetekben, amikor felborul a közrendvédelmi paktum az állami erőszakszervezetek, valamint a gyülekezési joggal élni – a hatóságok szerint általában visszaélni – kívánó csoportok között, felmerül a gyülekezési jog szigorúbb szabályozásának kérdése – ahogyan ez a 2006-os őszi radikális jobboldali tiltakozások idején történt. Az Intézet a Demokratikus Alternatíváért (IDEA) jelen tanulmányában az átalakuló magyar tiltakozási kultúra tükrében mutatjuk meg, milyen változások és arra irányuló szándékok fogalmazódtak meg a 2000-es évektől a gyülekezési jog szabályozására vonatkozóan.

On the problem of Oriental etymologies of Polish ogar and Hungarian agár 'hound'

by Marek Stachowski

Emocjonalne określenia osób w polskiej gwarze orawskiej w świetle leksyki węgierskiej – pochodzenie a pośrednictwo.

by Michał Németh

Words describing individual with emotional emphasis added used in the Polish Oravian dialect, in comparison with the... more Words describing individual with emotional emphasis added used in the Polish Oravian dialect, in comparison with the Hungarian lexicon – the question of possible mediation

The paper presents a small part of Polish dialectal vocabulary used in the Orawa region, held in common with the Hungarian lexicon. A special regard is paid to the possible Slovakian or Ukrainian mediation between Hungarian and the Oravian linguistic world. The main source of vocabulary is the Dictionary of the Oravian dialect compiled by Józef Kąś (Słownik gwary orawskiej, Kraków 2003), where approximately 80–100 such words are to be found. The scope of the work is, however, limited to a semantically homogeneous group of words describing human beings with emotional emphasis added, namely: baciar ‘a man, bachelor, an idle, lazy fellow without employment or profession’, bosarka ‘a negligently dressed women, suspected of practicing witchcraft; a witch’; hajduk ‘a servant at a court, a soldier; a daring, resolute bachelor, youth’; korchel ‘(with: condemnation) habitual drunkard’; pajtas ‘(with sympathy) a small, vivacious child’; siogor ‘malicious man’; siuhaj ‘a handsome, well-built young man; a youth’; somar ‘donkey; (ironically) a person who is taken to be illiterate; a fool’ and, finally, ziwań ‘(with contempt or maliciously) a lazy man’.

Is Hungarian "blown off its feet" by the English-dominated CMC channels? Self-regulative methods and the preservation of Hungarian

by Erika Darics

This is the draft of my paper. The final version has been published here:

Darics, E. and Christie, C. (2006). Is Hungarian "blown off its feet" by the English-dominated CMC channels? Self-regulative methods and the preservation of Hungarian.
In: Proceedings of the 5th international conference on Cultural Attitudes towards Technology and Communication (CATaC 2006), F. Sudweeks and C. Ess (Eds.), Tartu, Estonia, 667-680.

The multilingual nature of communication on the Internet raises a number of questions about the effect of this... more The multilingual nature of communication on the Internet raises a number of questions about the effect of this technology on individual languages. This article addresses some of those questions by considering different ways in which languages other than English can be affected by CMC: by the impact of the different communication genres CMC has generated; by the prevalent use of the English language in CMC; and by the constraints and opportunities that arise from the technology itself. The study focuses on the way in which one specific language - Hungarian - responds to the impact of CMC. It reviews the findings of recent Hungarian and international research, and concludes that although there is an acknowledgement that the technology has an effect on languages such as Hungarian, the specific effects have not yet been the subject of systematic research. In response, this paper presents the findings of some exploratory research on the use of special Hungarian characters with diacritics in ICT. In particular, it looks at the strategies employed by Hungarian speakers to avoid misunderstanding, and also considers the occurrences of intentional misunderstanding as a source of humour and language play.

Homonymie und Polysemie: der Fall von altungarisch szar und tscheremissisch agu

by Marek Stachowski

Uwagi o wybranych etymologiach węgierskich w języku polskim

by Marek Stachowski

(= Remarks on some Hungarian etymologies in Polish)

A töredékes (kulturális) test irása Polc Alain Asszony a fronton cimü müvében

by Louise O. Vasvári

Article in Hungarian

In this paper I will discuss Alaine Polcz’s Asszony a fronton (1991) ‘Woman on the Front,’ subtitled Egy fejezet az... more In this paper I will discuss Alaine Polcz’s Asszony a fronton (1991) ‘Woman on the Front,’ subtitled Egy fejezet az életemből ‘A Chapter from My Life,’ as an extreme example of self-contradictory life writing, offering a fragmented self-representation of the author’s subjectivity through the narrative itineraries of both her privatized and publicized body through the last year of the Second World War. The term life writing is a particularly useful categorization for this text, since Hungarian critics have referred to it variously, sometimes in the same article, as ‘memoir, novel, autobiographical novel, documentary novel, memorial records’(memoár, regény, önéletrajzi regény, dokumentum regény, emlékiratok). I will consider how Polcz narrativizes her identity in the two parts of her story. In the first, writing about her young married life with an abusive alcoholic husband during wartime Transylvania in 1944-45 she is unable to step outside the conventional romance plot, narrating her life in terms of the most conservative conceptualization of heterosexual femininity and wifehood, premised on self-renunciation. At the same time, she subverts her surface story of masochistic other-centeredness with manipulation of gaps and secrets, creating an ongoing tension between the concealed and revealed.

Grammatical Gender Trouble and Hungarian Gender[lessness]. Part I: Comparative Linguistic Gender

by Louise O. Vasvári

PUBLISHED IN AHEA E-JOURNAL 2011

The aim of this study is to define linguistic gender[lessness], with particular reference in the latter part of the... more The aim of this study is to define linguistic gender[lessness], with particular reference in the latter part of the article to Hungarian, and to show why it is a feminist issue.  I will discuss the [socio]linguistics of linguistic gender in three types of languages, those, like German and the Romance languages, among others, which possess grammatical gender, languages such as English, with only pronominal gender (sometimes misnamed ‘natural gender’), and languages such as Hungarian and other Finno-Ugric languages, as well as many other languages in the world, such as Turkish and Chinese, which have no linguistic or pronominal gender, but, like all languages, can make lexical gender distinctions. While in a narrow linguistic sense linguistic gender can be said to be afunctional, this does not take into account the ideological ramifications in gendered languages of the “leakage” between gender and sex[ism], while at the same time so-called genderless languages can express societal sexist assumptions linguistically through, for example, lexical gender, semantic derogation of women, and naming conventions. Thus, both languages with overt grammatical gender and those with gender-related asymmetries of a more covert nature show language to represent traditional cultural expectations, illustrating that linguistic gender is a feminist issue.

A töredékes (kulturális) test irása Polc Alain Asszony a fronton cimü müvében

by Louise O. Vasvári

Article in Hungarian

In this paper I will discuss Alaine Polcz’s Asszony a fronton (1991) ‘Woman on the Front,’ subtitled Egy fejezet az... more In this paper I will discuss Alaine Polcz’s Asszony a fronton (1991) ‘Woman on the Front,’ subtitled Egy fejezet az életemből ‘A Chapter from My Life,’ as an extreme example of self-contradictory life writing, offering a fragmented self-representation of the author’s subjectivity through the narrative itineraries of both her privatized and publicized body through the last year of the Second World War. The term life writing is a particularly useful categorization for this text, since Hungarian critics have referred to it variously, sometimes in the same article, as ‘memoir, novel, autobiographical novel, documentary novel, memorial records’(memoár, regény, önéletrajzi regény, dokumentum regény, emlékiratok). I will consider how Polcz narrativizes her identity in the two parts of her story. In the first, writing about her young married life with an abusive alcoholic husband during wartime Transylvania in 1944-45 she is unable to step outside the conventional romance plot, narrating her life in terms of the most conservative conceptualization of heterosexual femininity and wifehood, premised on self-renunciation. At the same time, she subverts her surface story of masochistic other-centeredness with manipulation of gaps and secrets, creating an ongoing tension between the concealed and revealed.

Parameter control methods for selection operators in genetic algorithms

by Vajda Peter

Towards fully automatic image segmentation evaluation

by Vajda Peter

Magyar régészek expedíciója Szeszósztrisz téglapiramisánál (Hungarian archaeological expedition to the mud-brick pyramid of Senwosret II)

by Zoltán Horváth

in Múzeum Café 8 (2009) 29-30

Téglából emelt örökkévalóság. Magyar régészeti kutatások El-Lahunban (Brick-moulded eternity. Hungarian archaeological fieldwork at el-Lahun)

by Zoltán Horváth

in Szalon 2010/1, 19-22

An argument for phrasal spell out

by Antonio Fábregas

Nordlyd. Tromsø University working papers on language & linguistics 2009 ;Volum 36.(1) s. 129-168

Happiness as a Subversive Activity: An Interview with Ivan Szendro on Commedia Dell'Arte as Healing & Resistance in Communist Hungary

by Ronald L. Boyer

This is a recent interview conducted on the theme of "polis as Muse" for an academic journal.

This interview with Hungarian actor and shaman Ivan Szendro examines the role of folk theatre performance art in the... more This interview with Hungarian actor and shaman Ivan Szendro examines the role of folk theatre performance art in the tradition of commedia dell'arte as a vital form of creative self-healing and political resistance in Hungary during the Soviet Occupation.

Adverbial (dis)ambiguities. Syntactic and prosodic features of ambiguous predicational adverbs

by Barbara Egedi

In: É. Kiss Katalin (ed.): Adverbs and Adverbial Adjuncts at the Interfaces. Interface Explorations 20. Berlin – New York: Mouton de Gruyter, 2009. 103-132