Laszlo Maracz - Academia.edu (original) (raw)
Papers by Laszlo Maracz
Nationalities Papers, 2009
This volume is a Hungarian-language collection of documents on HungarianRomanian relations betwee... more This volume is a Hungarian-language collection of documents on HungarianRomanian relations between 1948 and 1955. The documents have been selected and edited by two Hungarian senior researchers of Hungarian foreign relations in the twentieth century, namely Mihaly Fulop and Gabor Vincze. These authors have also written a useful introductory study (pp. 7-48) in the first part of the volume, providing the reader with the necessary background to the documents included. The central hypothesis of the introduction is that the Romanian communists created an "iron curtain" between Hungary and Romania to block the exchange of people, goods and ideas between the two countries, even though Hungary and Romania were supposedly friendly "people's democracies." The documents in the collection provide strong evidence for this thesis. According to Fulop and Vincze, the motivation for this policy of the Romanian communists was that they did not want to take any risks in maintaining control over disputed territory in Transylvania, which had been awarded to Romania after the First World War. The second part of the book (pp. 51-336) contains 80 documents, mostly from the Hungarian State Archive in Budapest. A few documents originate from Romanian archives and have been published in recent years in Romanian. To an extent the documents cover (and help to reconstruct) the systematic "integration" of the Hungarian minority into communist society, but they are especially interesting on the subject of Hungarian-Romanian bilateral relations, which deteriorated rapidly under Stalinism. The Romanian authorities, for instance, allowed the Hungarian consulate in Transylvania's capital Cluj to function only if it was called "Passport Office." Romania almost completely shut down cross-border traffic between the two people's democracies, an issue raised several times by Matyas Rakosi, the secretary-general of the Hungarian Workers' Party, in his letters to Romanian officials and during secret meetings with Romanian top-ranking communist leaders (see document no. 18). Rakosi tried to convince his Romanian counterparts to allow greater openness by arguing that Hungarian nationalism and chauvinism would otherwise be strengthened and
European Journal of Oral Sciences, 2010
In the Lisbon Treaty the European symbols are no longer expressing European identity. Because of ... more In the Lisbon Treaty the European symbols are no longer expressing European identity. Because of this, the ‘making’ of a European identity after the model of a national identity can be called unsuccessful. In this paper, it will be argued that neither other cultural-historical ideas offer a fruitful approach to set up a European identity. Instead of a top-down approach,
Politeja
The paper will adopt the position that language is an intrinsic and largely non‑negotiable part o... more The paper will adopt the position that language is an intrinsic and largely non‑negotiable part of individual culture and identity. The recognition of one’s own language receives more and more support in international political and institutional frameworks. The promotion of linguistic diversity is the official policy of the European Union. Due to such policies, it is to be expected that languages will remain in contact in the context of all sorts of levels of governance. In order to manage linguistic diversity in multilingual and multicultural areas, the introduction of a global regime of language policies is unavoidable. These policies will need to satisfy transnational requirements and conditions, like universal human rights and the norms and standards of Europeanization set by the EU, OSCE, Council of Europe, and so on. However, because there are manifold connections between language and power, as we know from the work of political scientists such as Pierre Bourdieu, and sociolin...
Exploring the Caucasus in the 21st Century
Anuario del Seminario de Filología Vasca "Julio de Urquijo", Mar 29, 2013
Bu çalışmada Türkiye'deki karar alıcıların Bosna Savaşı'na yönelik izledikleri dış politika anali... more Bu çalışmada Türkiye'deki karar alıcıların Bosna Savaşı'na yönelik izledikleri dış politika analiz edilmektedir. Araştırma sorusu Türkiye'nin o dönemdeki mevcut iç ve dış sorunlarına karşın nasıl olup da aktif bir politika izleyebildiğidir. Bu çalışma yeni bir devlet kimliği arayışı sürecinin bu politikada etkili olduğunu savunmaktadır.
Language Policy and Linguistic Justice, 2018
In an interdisciplinary approach, the study discusses the legal and socioeconomic aspects of Hung... more In an interdisciplinary approach, the study discusses the legal and socioeconomic aspects of Hungarian minority language use in the northwestern part of Romania, Transylvania. It presents traditional and innovative models of language activism in the region and discusses how supranational rules and market deregulation that followed the EU membership of the country opened up new possibilities for a “grassroots,” spontaneous expansion of multilingualism in the economy and in society in general.
Exploring the Caucasus in the 21st Century, 2011
Gábor Bálint de Szentkatolna was one of the most talented Hungarian linguists of the late ninetee... more Gábor Bálint de Szentkatolna was one of the most talented Hungarian linguists of the late nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century. He devoted his life to the study of the so-called 'Turanian' languages, i.e. the hypothesized language family of Uralic, Altaic and Dravidian languages. In the second half of the nineteenth century, the languages of the Caucasus were also considered to be scattered members of this language family. This Hungarian linguist wrote a number of grammars and dictionaries of these languages. Bálint de Szentkatolna also wrote a grammar and a dictionary of the Western Caucasian language, Kabardian, which he thought to be closely related to Hungarian. The Kabardian language is presently spoken by 443.000 persons in Russia, who live in the Kabardino-Balkaria and Karachai-Cherkessia native territories. The capital of these territories is Naltshik. The other speakers of Kabardian, more than one million of them, can be found in Turkey and in the Middle East. The fact that half of the Kabardian population has left its Northern Caucasian homeland is due to Russian colonial policy, starting in the beginning of the nineteenth century. Kabardian is generally considered to be a rather difficult language, and its sound system, especially, is rather complicated. The language counts 56 sounds, having only a few vowels. The set of consonants includes rare fricatives and affricatives, like the ejective ones displaying a clear phonemic distinction. Kabardian is closely related to Adyghe that is spoken by 125.000 people in Russia, in the Northern Caucasian Adygean Republic, of which Maikop is the capital. Most linguists, including Bálint de Szentkatolna, claimed that Adyghe and Kabardian are only dialectical variants of Circassian. 1 In the prefaces of his Kabardian grammar and dictionary, the terms Adyghe, Circassian and Kabardian are used as alternates. The term Adyghe actually functions as a kind of super-category covering Cirkassian and Kabardian. 2 According to the Russian scholar, Klimov, (1969, 135) the Adyghe-Circassian-Kabardian language is formed with Abkhaz and Ubyx that are no longer spoken in the Western Caucasian language group. The Western Caucasian languages are related to the Eastern Caucasian languages, including Avar, Chechen and Ingush, yielding the family of Northern Caucasian languages. 3 In this paper, we will address the question of how a Hungarian linguist became interested in the study of a complicated Caucasian language like Kabardian. It will be argued that this was due to three reasons. Firstly, Bálint de Szentkatolna was of Székely stock. The Székely is an ethnic Hungarian group living in the southern region of Transylvania, the so-called Székelyland at the foot of the Eastern Carpathians. Transylvania belongs presently to Romania but, before the First World War, it was under the suzerainty of the Hungarian Kingdom. Secondly, Bálint de Szentkatolna was a member of the Zichy-expedition to the Caucasus, in 1895, visiting the territories where Kabardian was still spoken. Thirdly, the Székely linguist was convinced of the fact that the so-called Turanian languages, including 1 See www.ethnologue.com. 2 See Szentkatolnai Bálint (1900, 1904). 3 Compare www.ethnologue.com. Kabardian, were related. 4 Finally, we will evaluate Bálint de Szentkatolna's study of the Kabardian language.
The Making of the Humanities, 2014
The first academic Hungarian dictionary A magyar nyelv szótára (The Dictionary of the Hungarian L... more The first academic Hungarian dictionary A magyar nyelv szótára (The Dictionary of the Hungarian Language) was a monumental work compiled by two members of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences: Gergely Czuczor (1800-1866) and János Fogarasi (1801-1878) that was published in six volumes between 1862 and 1874 [Figs. 2 and 3]. Rather than just being a list of Hungarian words, Czuczor-Fogarasi's monolingual dictionary (hereafter, the CzF Dictionary) must be considered a linguistic achievement. It contains 110,784 entries and is structured according to the agglutinative nature of the Hungarian language since it distinguishes roots and suffixes while also referring to interconnections within the root system. Its importance was recognized by one of the leading German linguists of the second half of the nineteenth century, August Friedrich Pott (1802-1887), who referred in his survey of European linguistics to the CzF Dictionary as an outstanding accomplishment on the part of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. 2 Czuczor and Fogarasi formulated the following four objectives when writing their dictionary: (1) to make an inventory of Hungarian words and word parts; (2) to determine their grammatical properties; (3) to define their meaning; and (4) to establish the etymology of Hungarian words by comparing the Hungarian roots with those of other languages. The CzF Dictionary is thus an explanatory, comparative and etymological dictionary all in one. From this point of view it is remarkable that the work has fallen into oblivion. 3 By uncovering the patterns of the Hungarian lexicon, the CzF Dictionary provided an interesting step forward in empirical and theoretical approaches to the Hungarian language. In this respect the CzF Dictionary is also relevant to Rens Bod's project detailing the history of the humanities in according with various patterns and rules. 4 The present paper will argue that a discussion of the patterns and rules seen in the CzF Dictionary can contribute to the richness of such a historiographical project and that there is therefore every reason to include such a dictionary in a history of the humanities based on pattern-seeking research.
Acta Universitatis Sapientiae: European and Regional Studies, 2013
Although English is often conceived as the dominant language of international and transnational c... more Although English is often conceived as the dominant language of international and transnational communication in higher education, it is not the o nly medium of communication in the academic community. National, regional and local languages remain important, in some European countries more than in o thers. In Janssens, Mamadouh and Maracz (2011) we have argued that too little attention is paid to languages in the realm between the local and the global domain: what we called languag es of regional communication, that can be used in multilingual and in border regions. Her e we focus on multilingualism in higher education in regions where global and regional languages are in contact or compete with each other for hegemony. Will the languages - in the 20 th century quite often national languages - of higher education be replaced by English or will there be developing a more balanced situation where next to English also national, regi onal and local languages play a role in higher educat...
Social Inclusion, 2021
Multilingual or linguistically heterogeneous societies are increasing around the globe. Socio-pol... more Multilingual or linguistically heterogeneous societies are increasing around the globe. Socio-political processes, like Europeanization and globalization, are responsible for this expansion. Universal norms and standards for language use and identity are spreading, mediated by international organizations and charters. In this view, multilingualism can be seen as a challenge to national social cohesion, though it remained undisputed before the development of global multi level governance. In many places, languages of traditional territorial minorities have been recognized and given official status, leading in some cases to new forms of local, regional, and national governance. Furthermore, the proliferation of multilingualism is boosted by a variety of forms of mobility, where mobility is understood as physical migration or new forms of virtual mobility connected to digital networks. Mobility in this sense underpins the linguistic and transnational identity of the migrants who bring ...
In recent years, the traditional classification of the Hungarian language as a Finno-Ugric langua... more In recent years, the traditional classification of the Hungarian language as a Finno-Ugric language has been challenged by internationally respected scholars (see, for example Marcantonio 2002). These studies call the Uralic/Finno-Ugric hypothesis a ‘myth’. In fact, these studies challenge also the outcome of the ‘Ugric-Turkic War’ when influential Hungarian scholars in the second half of the nineteenth century decided to separate Hungarian and Turkic and to classify them in different language families. However, if the classification of Central Asian languages was and is doubtful the question arises what sort of ‘other’, non-linguistic arguments decided on the outcome of the Ugric-Turkic War. This paper focuses on these other, less known arguments of the Ugric-Turkic War. These arguments draw on the history of sciences, nineteenth centuries ideological, geopolitical and political developments in Europe and the Hapsburg Empire, the cultural-historical definition of ‘Europeanness’ aga...
Language Problems and Language Planning, 2021
This article revisits a well-known dichotomy (the ‘territorial’ and ‘personal’ principles) and de... more This article revisits a well-known dichotomy (the ‘territorial’ and ‘personal’ principles) and develops a four-element classification of state approaches (from the most generous to the most menacing, from the perspective of speakers of minority languages). The article examines the implications for language policy of geographically dispersed or spatially concentrated patterns of distribution of speakers of particular languages. We begin by exploring the general literature on language policy, focusing in particular on the territorial and personal principles, the use of ‘threshold rules’ at municipal and other subnational levels, and the hybrid language regimes that are often a consequence of sociolinguistic complexity. We consider the extent to which responses to linguistic diversity across Europe may be understood by reference to these principles and categories. We explain why we have selected particular case studies (the Baltic republics, Transylvania, Switzerland, Belgium and Irela...
Nationalities Papers, 2009
This volume is a Hungarian-language collection of documents on HungarianRomanian relations betwee... more This volume is a Hungarian-language collection of documents on HungarianRomanian relations between 1948 and 1955. The documents have been selected and edited by two Hungarian senior researchers of Hungarian foreign relations in the twentieth century, namely Mihaly Fulop and Gabor Vincze. These authors have also written a useful introductory study (pp. 7-48) in the first part of the volume, providing the reader with the necessary background to the documents included. The central hypothesis of the introduction is that the Romanian communists created an "iron curtain" between Hungary and Romania to block the exchange of people, goods and ideas between the two countries, even though Hungary and Romania were supposedly friendly "people's democracies." The documents in the collection provide strong evidence for this thesis. According to Fulop and Vincze, the motivation for this policy of the Romanian communists was that they did not want to take any risks in maintaining control over disputed territory in Transylvania, which had been awarded to Romania after the First World War. The second part of the book (pp. 51-336) contains 80 documents, mostly from the Hungarian State Archive in Budapest. A few documents originate from Romanian archives and have been published in recent years in Romanian. To an extent the documents cover (and help to reconstruct) the systematic "integration" of the Hungarian minority into communist society, but they are especially interesting on the subject of Hungarian-Romanian bilateral relations, which deteriorated rapidly under Stalinism. The Romanian authorities, for instance, allowed the Hungarian consulate in Transylvania's capital Cluj to function only if it was called "Passport Office." Romania almost completely shut down cross-border traffic between the two people's democracies, an issue raised several times by Matyas Rakosi, the secretary-general of the Hungarian Workers' Party, in his letters to Romanian officials and during secret meetings with Romanian top-ranking communist leaders (see document no. 18). Rakosi tried to convince his Romanian counterparts to allow greater openness by arguing that Hungarian nationalism and chauvinism would otherwise be strengthened and
European Journal of Oral Sciences, 2010
In the Lisbon Treaty the European symbols are no longer expressing European identity. Because of ... more In the Lisbon Treaty the European symbols are no longer expressing European identity. Because of this, the ‘making’ of a European identity after the model of a national identity can be called unsuccessful. In this paper, it will be argued that neither other cultural-historical ideas offer a fruitful approach to set up a European identity. Instead of a top-down approach,
Politeja
The paper will adopt the position that language is an intrinsic and largely non‑negotiable part o... more The paper will adopt the position that language is an intrinsic and largely non‑negotiable part of individual culture and identity. The recognition of one’s own language receives more and more support in international political and institutional frameworks. The promotion of linguistic diversity is the official policy of the European Union. Due to such policies, it is to be expected that languages will remain in contact in the context of all sorts of levels of governance. In order to manage linguistic diversity in multilingual and multicultural areas, the introduction of a global regime of language policies is unavoidable. These policies will need to satisfy transnational requirements and conditions, like universal human rights and the norms and standards of Europeanization set by the EU, OSCE, Council of Europe, and so on. However, because there are manifold connections between language and power, as we know from the work of political scientists such as Pierre Bourdieu, and sociolin...
Exploring the Caucasus in the 21st Century
Anuario del Seminario de Filología Vasca "Julio de Urquijo", Mar 29, 2013
Bu çalışmada Türkiye'deki karar alıcıların Bosna Savaşı'na yönelik izledikleri dış politika anali... more Bu çalışmada Türkiye'deki karar alıcıların Bosna Savaşı'na yönelik izledikleri dış politika analiz edilmektedir. Araştırma sorusu Türkiye'nin o dönemdeki mevcut iç ve dış sorunlarına karşın nasıl olup da aktif bir politika izleyebildiğidir. Bu çalışma yeni bir devlet kimliği arayışı sürecinin bu politikada etkili olduğunu savunmaktadır.
Language Policy and Linguistic Justice, 2018
In an interdisciplinary approach, the study discusses the legal and socioeconomic aspects of Hung... more In an interdisciplinary approach, the study discusses the legal and socioeconomic aspects of Hungarian minority language use in the northwestern part of Romania, Transylvania. It presents traditional and innovative models of language activism in the region and discusses how supranational rules and market deregulation that followed the EU membership of the country opened up new possibilities for a “grassroots,” spontaneous expansion of multilingualism in the economy and in society in general.
Exploring the Caucasus in the 21st Century, 2011
Gábor Bálint de Szentkatolna was one of the most talented Hungarian linguists of the late ninetee... more Gábor Bálint de Szentkatolna was one of the most talented Hungarian linguists of the late nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century. He devoted his life to the study of the so-called 'Turanian' languages, i.e. the hypothesized language family of Uralic, Altaic and Dravidian languages. In the second half of the nineteenth century, the languages of the Caucasus were also considered to be scattered members of this language family. This Hungarian linguist wrote a number of grammars and dictionaries of these languages. Bálint de Szentkatolna also wrote a grammar and a dictionary of the Western Caucasian language, Kabardian, which he thought to be closely related to Hungarian. The Kabardian language is presently spoken by 443.000 persons in Russia, who live in the Kabardino-Balkaria and Karachai-Cherkessia native territories. The capital of these territories is Naltshik. The other speakers of Kabardian, more than one million of them, can be found in Turkey and in the Middle East. The fact that half of the Kabardian population has left its Northern Caucasian homeland is due to Russian colonial policy, starting in the beginning of the nineteenth century. Kabardian is generally considered to be a rather difficult language, and its sound system, especially, is rather complicated. The language counts 56 sounds, having only a few vowels. The set of consonants includes rare fricatives and affricatives, like the ejective ones displaying a clear phonemic distinction. Kabardian is closely related to Adyghe that is spoken by 125.000 people in Russia, in the Northern Caucasian Adygean Republic, of which Maikop is the capital. Most linguists, including Bálint de Szentkatolna, claimed that Adyghe and Kabardian are only dialectical variants of Circassian. 1 In the prefaces of his Kabardian grammar and dictionary, the terms Adyghe, Circassian and Kabardian are used as alternates. The term Adyghe actually functions as a kind of super-category covering Cirkassian and Kabardian. 2 According to the Russian scholar, Klimov, (1969, 135) the Adyghe-Circassian-Kabardian language is formed with Abkhaz and Ubyx that are no longer spoken in the Western Caucasian language group. The Western Caucasian languages are related to the Eastern Caucasian languages, including Avar, Chechen and Ingush, yielding the family of Northern Caucasian languages. 3 In this paper, we will address the question of how a Hungarian linguist became interested in the study of a complicated Caucasian language like Kabardian. It will be argued that this was due to three reasons. Firstly, Bálint de Szentkatolna was of Székely stock. The Székely is an ethnic Hungarian group living in the southern region of Transylvania, the so-called Székelyland at the foot of the Eastern Carpathians. Transylvania belongs presently to Romania but, before the First World War, it was under the suzerainty of the Hungarian Kingdom. Secondly, Bálint de Szentkatolna was a member of the Zichy-expedition to the Caucasus, in 1895, visiting the territories where Kabardian was still spoken. Thirdly, the Székely linguist was convinced of the fact that the so-called Turanian languages, including 1 See www.ethnologue.com. 2 See Szentkatolnai Bálint (1900, 1904). 3 Compare www.ethnologue.com. Kabardian, were related. 4 Finally, we will evaluate Bálint de Szentkatolna's study of the Kabardian language.
The Making of the Humanities, 2014
The first academic Hungarian dictionary A magyar nyelv szótára (The Dictionary of the Hungarian L... more The first academic Hungarian dictionary A magyar nyelv szótára (The Dictionary of the Hungarian Language) was a monumental work compiled by two members of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences: Gergely Czuczor (1800-1866) and János Fogarasi (1801-1878) that was published in six volumes between 1862 and 1874 [Figs. 2 and 3]. Rather than just being a list of Hungarian words, Czuczor-Fogarasi's monolingual dictionary (hereafter, the CzF Dictionary) must be considered a linguistic achievement. It contains 110,784 entries and is structured according to the agglutinative nature of the Hungarian language since it distinguishes roots and suffixes while also referring to interconnections within the root system. Its importance was recognized by one of the leading German linguists of the second half of the nineteenth century, August Friedrich Pott (1802-1887), who referred in his survey of European linguistics to the CzF Dictionary as an outstanding accomplishment on the part of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. 2 Czuczor and Fogarasi formulated the following four objectives when writing their dictionary: (1) to make an inventory of Hungarian words and word parts; (2) to determine their grammatical properties; (3) to define their meaning; and (4) to establish the etymology of Hungarian words by comparing the Hungarian roots with those of other languages. The CzF Dictionary is thus an explanatory, comparative and etymological dictionary all in one. From this point of view it is remarkable that the work has fallen into oblivion. 3 By uncovering the patterns of the Hungarian lexicon, the CzF Dictionary provided an interesting step forward in empirical and theoretical approaches to the Hungarian language. In this respect the CzF Dictionary is also relevant to Rens Bod's project detailing the history of the humanities in according with various patterns and rules. 4 The present paper will argue that a discussion of the patterns and rules seen in the CzF Dictionary can contribute to the richness of such a historiographical project and that there is therefore every reason to include such a dictionary in a history of the humanities based on pattern-seeking research.
Acta Universitatis Sapientiae: European and Regional Studies, 2013
Although English is often conceived as the dominant language of international and transnational c... more Although English is often conceived as the dominant language of international and transnational communication in higher education, it is not the o nly medium of communication in the academic community. National, regional and local languages remain important, in some European countries more than in o thers. In Janssens, Mamadouh and Maracz (2011) we have argued that too little attention is paid to languages in the realm between the local and the global domain: what we called languag es of regional communication, that can be used in multilingual and in border regions. Her e we focus on multilingualism in higher education in regions where global and regional languages are in contact or compete with each other for hegemony. Will the languages - in the 20 th century quite often national languages - of higher education be replaced by English or will there be developing a more balanced situation where next to English also national, regi onal and local languages play a role in higher educat...
Social Inclusion, 2021
Multilingual or linguistically heterogeneous societies are increasing around the globe. Socio-pol... more Multilingual or linguistically heterogeneous societies are increasing around the globe. Socio-political processes, like Europeanization and globalization, are responsible for this expansion. Universal norms and standards for language use and identity are spreading, mediated by international organizations and charters. In this view, multilingualism can be seen as a challenge to national social cohesion, though it remained undisputed before the development of global multi level governance. In many places, languages of traditional territorial minorities have been recognized and given official status, leading in some cases to new forms of local, regional, and national governance. Furthermore, the proliferation of multilingualism is boosted by a variety of forms of mobility, where mobility is understood as physical migration or new forms of virtual mobility connected to digital networks. Mobility in this sense underpins the linguistic and transnational identity of the migrants who bring ...
In recent years, the traditional classification of the Hungarian language as a Finno-Ugric langua... more In recent years, the traditional classification of the Hungarian language as a Finno-Ugric language has been challenged by internationally respected scholars (see, for example Marcantonio 2002). These studies call the Uralic/Finno-Ugric hypothesis a ‘myth’. In fact, these studies challenge also the outcome of the ‘Ugric-Turkic War’ when influential Hungarian scholars in the second half of the nineteenth century decided to separate Hungarian and Turkic and to classify them in different language families. However, if the classification of Central Asian languages was and is doubtful the question arises what sort of ‘other’, non-linguistic arguments decided on the outcome of the Ugric-Turkic War. This paper focuses on these other, less known arguments of the Ugric-Turkic War. These arguments draw on the history of sciences, nineteenth centuries ideological, geopolitical and political developments in Europe and the Hapsburg Empire, the cultural-historical definition of ‘Europeanness’ aga...
Language Problems and Language Planning, 2021
This article revisits a well-known dichotomy (the ‘territorial’ and ‘personal’ principles) and de... more This article revisits a well-known dichotomy (the ‘territorial’ and ‘personal’ principles) and develops a four-element classification of state approaches (from the most generous to the most menacing, from the perspective of speakers of minority languages). The article examines the implications for language policy of geographically dispersed or spatially concentrated patterns of distribution of speakers of particular languages. We begin by exploring the general literature on language policy, focusing in particular on the territorial and personal principles, the use of ‘threshold rules’ at municipal and other subnational levels, and the hybrid language regimes that are often a consequence of sociolinguistic complexity. We consider the extent to which responses to linguistic diversity across Europe may be understood by reference to these principles and categories. We explain why we have selected particular case studies (the Baltic republics, Transylvania, Switzerland, Belgium and Irela...