rss_2.0Sciendo RSS Feed for Acta Universitatis Sapientiae, Philologicahttps://sciendo.com/journal/AUSPhttps://www.sciendo.comhttps://sciendo-parsed.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/6564a04cc4f7d26fa6b557b2/cover-image.jpghttps://sciendo.com/journal/AUSP140216https://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/ausp-2023-0020<abstract> <title style='display:none'>Abstract</title> <p>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 <italic>Multă forţă şi un dram de gingăşie</italic> [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.</p> </abstract>ARTICLEtruehttps://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/ausp-2023-00202023-11-27T00:00:00.000+00:00https://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/ausp-2023-0022<abstract> <title style='display:none'>Abstract</title> <p>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 <italic>engagement</italic>, 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.</p> </abstract>ARTICLEtruehttps://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/ausp-2023-00222023-11-27T00:00:00.000+00:00https://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/ausp-2023-0018<abstract> <title style='display:none'>Abstract</title> <p>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.</p> </abstract>ARTICLEtruehttps://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/ausp-2023-00182023-11-27T00:00:00.000+00:00https://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/ausp-2023-0023<abstract> <title style='display:none'>Abstract</title> <p>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.</p> </abstract>ARTICLEtruehttps://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/ausp-2023-00232023-11-27T00:00:00.000+00:00https://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/ausp-2023-0017<abstract> <title style='display:none'>Abstract</title> <p>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.</p> </abstract>ARTICLEtruehttps://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/ausp-2023-00172023-11-27T00:00:00.000+00:00https://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/ausp-2023-0019<abstract> <title style='display:none'>Abstract</title> <p>In this study, we aim to analyse the origin and semantics of one of the lexemes used by Romanians to refer to Hungarians: <italic>boanghin(a)</italic>, also used as <italic>boanghen(a)</italic>. 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 <italic>boanghin</italic>, or <italic>boanghen</italic> 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. <italic>bozgor</italic>, which is going to be presented in a forthcoming study.</p> </abstract>ARTICLEtruehttps://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/ausp-2023-00192023-11-27T00:00:00.000+00:00https://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/ausp-2023-0014<abstract> <title style='display:none'>Abstract</title> <p>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</p> </abstract>ARTICLEtruehttps://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/ausp-2023-00142023-11-27T00:00:00.000+00:00https://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/ausp-2023-0016<abstract> <title style='display:none'>Abstract</title> <p>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.</p> </abstract>ARTICLEtruehttps://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/ausp-2023-00162023-11-27T00:00:00.000+00:00https://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/ausp-2023-0021<abstract> <title style='display:none'>Abstract</title> <p>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. <sc>hand for help, hand for care, hand for action</sc>); however, in the archaic prayers, they often take form in specific meanings (<sc>hand for help to get into heaven, hand for providence, hand for control</sc>); 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.</p> </abstract>ARTICLEtruehttps://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/ausp-2023-00212023-11-27T00:00:00.000+00:00https://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/ausp-2023-0015<abstract> <title style='display:none'>Abstract</title> <p>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.</p> </abstract>ARTICLEtruehttps://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/ausp-2023-00152023-11-27T00:00:00.000+00:00https://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/ausp-2023-0013<abstract> <title style='display:none'>Abstract</title> <p>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.</p> </abstract>ARTICLEtruehttps://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/ausp-2023-00132023-11-27T00:00:00.000+00:00https://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/ausp-2023-0004<abstract><title style='display:none'>Abstract</title> <p>Her award-winning novels and thought-provoking TED talks propelled the Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie into the public consciousness and sparked a worldwide discourse about feminism in the late 2010s. Adichie uses her work to empower women all around the world to dismantle gender constructs, stereotypes, and sexualities designed to enslave women in society. Several researchers have successfully construed common motifs in her fiction. This paper draws on recent studies undertaken by Moffat Sebola, who affirms that Adichie’s <italic>Dear Ijeawele, or A Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions </italic>(2017) is not only a list of proposals; with closer examination, the manifesto reveals the recurring themes throughout Adichie’s writing. Furthermore, for analytical convenience, Moffat Sebola (2022) selects only seven of Adichie’s fifteen suggestions, identifies the elements that reflect her authorial perspective, and utilizes them as filters in analysing the author’s novels. The main objective of this study has been the presentation of the elements of Adichie’s fiction in all fifteen manifesto statements. In order to achieve this objective, themes of womanhood, femininity, love, history, culture, gender equality, and otherness are discussed in separate sections with examples from her novels. The first section of the paper provides a brief overview of African feminist fiction within which the work of this third-generation Nigerian writer is embedded.</p> </abstract>ARTICLEtruehttps://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/ausp-2023-00042023-11-15T00:00:00.000+00:00https://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/ausp-2023-0009<abstract><title style='display:none'>Abstract</title> <p>This article is the first part of a series of publications on Arthur Koestler’s reception in Hungary during its transition to Communism. Given the author’s iconic status as an anti-Communist writer, it is reasonable to suppose that his texts would have been banned and his name rarely uttered, much less printed, in Hungary before the 1989 regime change. It is thus not surprising that this view is virtually uncontested by scholars both in Hungary and beyond. Yet, as shown here on the basis of thirty-one articles published between April 1945 and June 1948 in Hungarian dailies, journals, and magazines, at least in this early and transitional period, Koestler’s writing is not only frequently mentioned but actively discussed. Furthermore, through a closer analysis of the contents of these texts, five specific categories of mentions are identified: (1) Koestler cited as a journalist reporting on contemporary events; (2) his opinion quoted as that of an authority figure; (3) polemics towards Koestler’s views; (4) reports on the foreign reception of Hungarian literature, including Koestler; and (5) Koestler used as a public scapegoat.</p> </abstract>ARTICLEtruehttps://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/ausp-2023-00092023-11-15T00:00:00.000+00:00https://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/ausp-2023-0012<abstract><title style='display:none'>Abstract</title> <p>The growing digitalization of our world is not only changing the way we process information but also raises new questions regarding the manner in which we read and comprehend digital texts. The way the digital text structures information is different from how traditional printed texts do it. Therefore, the receiver needs new strategies of text acquisition. It is not the well-known generalities related to the subject that my proposed study intends to regurgitate. Rather, it aims to focus on and attempts to explore some so far mostly ignored or only tangentially (if at all) mentioned aspects of the matter such as: 1) the literary (e.g. fictional) versus non-fiction nature of the digital text; 2) how digital reading culture affects analogue (print) reading culture; 3) a comparative generational view, i.e. similar or diverging features of the above factors, depending on whether the receiver of the text is a Generation X or a Generation Z reader, the former raised on printed books being the product of the “Gutenberg Galaxy,” while the latter is shaped both by the Gutenberg but primarily by the “Neumann Galaxy.”</p> </abstract>ARTICLEtruehttps://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/ausp-2023-00122023-11-15T00:00:00.000+00:00https://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/ausp-2023-0001<abstract><title style='display:none'>Abstract</title> <p>While some Jewish immigrant autobiographies have received broad critical attention, a few important autobiographical endeavours have been underrepresented or almost forgotten. Autobiographies written by Jewish female writers who immigrated to America from Russia, Poland, or Galicia often draw a bifurcated picture of their struggles in callous New York sweatshops, or, on the contrary, they exalt the Jews’ notable success while blending in the American melting pot. Scarce studies, however, have been devoted to the dislocation and uprootedness of female immigrants and to the nostalgic feelings they have experienced during their absorption into American reality. This paper intends to resuscitate the forgotten voice of a Jewish immigrant female writer, Rose Gollup-Cohen. Moreover, using primarily psychoanalytical methodology and a feminist theory, the paper focuses on the nostalgic feelings that immigrants reverted to. Finally, it deals with both the therapeutic and the destructive powers of compulsive writing and shows how the writing process assists an immigrant writer when coping with distress experienced in her new homeland, but, on the other hand, it also demonstrates how compulsive writing may lead to obsessive behaviours, resulting in losing awareness of one’s surroundings, neglecting one’s family, and even to depression and suicide.</p> </abstract>ARTICLEtruehttps://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/ausp-2023-00012023-11-15T00:00:00.000+00:00https://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/ausp-2023-0007<abstract><title style='display:none'>Abstract</title> <p>The present study aims at analysing the relationship and establishing the similarities between ancient Eastern myths, literature, and today’s leading scientific views such as quantum physics. In ancient times, the mythic worldview was the only one being widely accepted, a dominancy that lasted up into, roughly put, the mid-nineteenth century, when most sciences as known today started to flourish and overtook the place of mythology, invalidating it. Nowadays, however, ancient myths and modern sciences have begun getting closer to each other and, at a deep insight, one may discover that they reveal the same truth. Thus, the paper shall discuss and compare ancient Buddhist texts with leading quantum theories and literary works by Béla Hamvas and Sándor Weöres that facilitate the comprehension of the essence.¹</p> </abstract>ARTICLEtruehttps://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/ausp-2023-00072023-11-15T00:00:00.000+00:00https://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/ausp-2023-0008<abstract><title style='display:none'>Abstract</title> <p>The topos of journey in literature is anything but contemporary, it dates back to Homer who in the <italic>Odyssey</italic> first developed the idea incorporated into a literary work on the subject. The themes of journey, of nostalgia and restlessness, present in the <italic>Odyssey</italic> as a guiding principle and driving force, can also be found in Antal Szerb’s <italic>Journey by Moonlight</italic>. From the very beginning, from how the main character of the novel, Mihály, introduces his trip to Italy, it is clear that it cannot be a conventional journey but one towards the discovery of himself. He arrives in Venice, a unique city because it is close to the border which divides Central and Eastern Europe from Western Europe, yet it presents the essence of Italian life. It is no coincidence that Mihály, although he embarks on his honeymoon with the confidence of a newlywed, is immediately thrown out of his peace of mind, and his psychological drama begins. He is given the chance to get away from a domestic atmosphere laden with norms and expectations, and the Italian trip, with its strong exoticism, offers him a taste of a different kind of existence, away from ordinary life, and becomes the road to and for self-understanding.</p> </abstract>ARTICLEtruehttps://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/ausp-2023-00082023-11-15T00:00:00.000+00:00https://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/ausp-2023-0003<abstract><title style='display:none'>Abstract</title> <p>Who is a woman? In a gender-fluid typical world, the answer to this question invites a serious exposition of non-linear and non-binary possibilities. As the biological definition becomes more inclusive of fragmented identities, it becomes extremely complicated to arrive at a simplistic, innocent truth of recognition. Within the third-world dynamics, this question invites more dimensions. Set against the backdrop of mass female genocide on the occasion of perfecting cloning, Manjula Padmanabhan in her works of futuristic dystopian fiction, <italic>Escape</italic> (2015) and <italic>The Island of Lost Girls</italic> (2017), has taken up this issue of womanhood and furtively trodden to arrive at a philosophical space that allows the modernist epistemological notion of a “woman” as a well-defined category to reincarnate within a postmodern paradigm to help locate women beyond the generic nuances of reproduction and menial labour. Through analysing the selective works, this research article aims at arriving close to the model of womanhood and depicting the plurality of truth in action.</p> </abstract>ARTICLEtruehttps://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/ausp-2023-00032023-11-15T00:00:00.000+00:00https://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/ausp-2023-0011<abstract><title style='display:none'>Abstract</title> <p>This paper aims towards identifying those protagonists who occupy the position of mediator in the process of decoding the message by uniting detached ideologies in Carlos Morton’s <italic>The Miser of Mexico</italic> (1989) and <italic>Trumpus Caesar</italic> (2021). On the level of the narrative, border-resurfacing and its impact on society are presented by anecdote and humour. Jon Yates’s 2022 book entitled <italic>Fractured. How We Learn to Live Together </italic>mentions that in order to reconnect divided societies, ideologies, and races, the factor of laughter proves to be the most effective means: “If the person smiled, you knew you had someone in the mood to buy; if not, it was time to move on” (Yates 2022, 17). Slavoj Žižek in his work entitled <italic>Did Somebody Say Totalitarianism? Five Interventions in the (Mis)use of a Notion</italic> argues that humanity can restore communication with the Divine only by the mediated assistance of Jesus Christ, who “must sacrifice himself” (Žižek 2002, 50) in the process. In order to mend broken relationships, Carlos Morton’s subjective-participative mediators assume the position of honest advisors, critics, non-judgmental and non-political entities, individual and self-sufficient characters, who by partial or total detachment point out the tragic in the comical. With the help of humour and satire, the playwright’s protagonists in the dramas mentioned above captivate audiences by softening critical situations through mutual acceptance and tolerance.</p> </abstract>ARTICLEtruehttps://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/ausp-2023-00112023-11-15T00:00:00.000+00:00https://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/ausp-2023-0002<abstract><title style='display:none'>Abstract</title> <p>Ever since it was published, Margaret Atwood’s <italic>Hag-Seed </italic>(2016) has been scrutinized for its peculiar engagements with the Shakespearean pre-text at the cross-section of various discourses, from literary and media studies, through drama pedagogy, even to prison studies. Drawing on the prison metaphor from the original and recontextualizing it as a contemporary prison performance is just one of the multitudinous forms and ways in which <italic>The Tempest</italic> is incorporated into Atwood’s novel. Thus, though it is quite difficult to designate a sole term for what she (un)does with the classic, one striking issue anyone may encounter is its intertwining metatextuality which encapsulates many of its core interpretations as a <italic>rewriting </italic>and/or <italic>adaptation</italic>. The present paper aims at unravelling the many layers, means and functions of this particular type of metatextuality and/or metatheatricality found in the novel. We look at the polyphonic nexus of texts and contexts that defines Atwood’s novel as an experiment that reconsiders, with a gesture of metatextual homage, the prospects of rewriting – a practice Shakespeare himself was highly familiar with – in the contemporary age. Nested in the Genettean structuralist framework (Genette 1997 [1982]), our approach is meant to expand its applicability taking into consideration Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of rhizome to investigate Atwood’s rewriting as an instance of “rhizomatic metatextuality” as well as the strategies of interpretation, appropriation, and reconstruction in fan fiction rewriting (see Jenkins 1992). Placing metatextuality as the central interpretive key of the novel, we shall discuss the roles of theatre (and art, in general) represented in <italic>Hag-Seed</italic> as an aesthetic and art history account, as well as the status of the interpreter or the intended audience of both the novel and the play within.</p> </abstract>ARTICLEtruehttps://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/ausp-2023-00022023-11-15T00:00:00.000+00:00en-us-1