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Prečo má slovenčina tri nárečia: prípadová štúdia z historickej perceptuálnej dialektológie

Author(s): Alexander Maxwell / Language(s): Slovak Issue: 2/2009

Dialect taxonomies emerge from a political context, and change in response to political events. This article, a case study in "Historical Perceptual Dialectology," tracks the history of Slovak dialect taxonomies. In the early nineteenth century, outside observers saw the Slovaks as partly Polish, and Partly Czech, while Slovak savants classified themselves either with open-ended lists based on prominent towns, or into dual ethnonymic categories such as "Germano-Slavic" or "Polno-Slavic." The modern tripartite subdivisions of East Slovak, Central Slovak, and Western Slovak do not reflect linguistic reality, but instead emerged from Ludovit Stur's attempt to codify a literary Slovak, specifically his desire to overcome confessional divisions between Catholics and Protestants.

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Úradné a neúradné vlastné mená v bilingválnej onymickej krajine

Author(s): Ján Bauko / Language(s): Slovak Issue: 1/2021

The paper deals with the visual representation of official and non-official proper names in a bilingual onymic landscape. The onymic landscape consists of official and non-official proper names located on nameplates, inscriptions in public spaces, various areas and extralingual signs that point to their names. Research into the visual representation of proper names is a relatively new area of socioonomastics. The onymic landscape changes dynamically depending on the time, region and socio-cultural dimension; the state, local governments, business and civil spheres participate in its creation. The state regulates the use of official proper names through language policy and also influences their visualization. In addition to official forms, non-official forms of proper names appear in the onymic landscape. In a bilingual onymic landscape, proper names are visualized not only in the state language but also in the language of the minority, resp. another foreign language. The author examines the bilingual anthroponymic, toponymic and chrematonymic landscape of Slovak-Hungarian bilingual municipalities in Southern Slovakia.

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O Kontinuitě a Diskontinuitě sociolingvistického Výzkumu: Jazyk, Jazyky a Interakční Procesy v Hradci Králové

Author(s): Jiří Nekvapil / Language(s): Czech Issue: 2/2020

The development of research areas, disciplines and sub-disciplines is hard to map; thus, researchers can often choose to what extent they want to represent it: either via the rhetoric of continuity or revolution. Using Hradec Králové (HK) as an example I demonstrate that a number of sociolinguistic findings are relevant across different research paradigms. I present an overview of the urban speech studies carried out by B. Dejmek (esp. Dejmek, 1981 and 1987) and the interactional studies arising since the 1990s. I discuss the issue of research on multilingualism and superdiversity in the city. Finally, I report on my own research on the linguistic landscape of HK and introduce and comment on the concept of the perception scale of the representation of individual languages. I sketch the development of sociolinguistic research as a fairly coherent whole, which is shaped by the linguistic reality, the shared knowledge of this reality and the researchers themselves, who reject or follow their predecessors. Hence, the presented coherent whole is not a mere expert construct – its formation can essentially be studied “turn-by-turn”, similarly to a conversation analyst studying individual turns in an ongoing interaction or in a dialogical network (see Nekvapil – Leudar, 2002).

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Jazyk – Reč – Sociálna Inklúzia

Author(s): Oľga Orgoňová / Language(s): Slovak Issue: 2/2020

The study presents an overview of reflections on the synergic application of methodological paradigms in predominantly paradigmatic structuralism after the communicative and pragmatic turn in linguistics. The reflections on methodological continuity are applied to the research of the active aspect of language rooted in the real social world. These theoretical pillars of linguistic research are seen in relation to the methodological situation in the humanities, as well as in the social sciences and are enriched with stimuli from the functioning of the so-called civil science. The foundations of researching and stimulating social inclusion are laid on the background of the mentioned theoretical frameworks, with the support of a selected professional semi-variety of the national language. The so-called easy language rooted in the professional vocabulary for the laymen, created by linguists and supported by civil science in the conditions of liberalization of the digital era society, becomes the medium for optimizing social relations between experts and non-experts.

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A robust approach to variation in Carpathian Rusyn: Resampling-based methods for small data sets

Author(s): Moulay Zaidan Lahjouji-Seppälä,Achim Rabus / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2021

Quantitative, corpus based research on spontaneous spoken Carpathian Rusyn language can cause several data-related problems: Speakers are using ambivalent forms in different quantities, resulting in a biased data set - while a stricter data-cleaning process would lead to a large scale data loss. On top of that, polytomous categorical dependent variables are hard to analyze due to methodological limitations. This paper provides several approaches to face unbalanced and biased data sets containing variation of conjugational forms of the verb maty 'to have' and (po-)znaty 'to know' in Carpathian Rusyn language. Using resampling based methods like Cross-Validation, Bootstrapping and Random Forests, we provide a strategy for circumventing possible methodological pitfalls and gaining the most information from our precious data, without trying to p-hack the results. Calculating the predictive power of several sociolinguistic factors on linguistic variation, we can make valid statements about the (sociolinguistic) status of Rusyn and the stability of the old dialect continuum of Rusyn varieties.

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Ideologie, Redewendungen, Sprachformen und Lebensmodus in den kommunistischen Jahren Rumäniens

Author(s): Mihaela Iuliana DUDEANU / Language(s): German Issue: 1-2/2021

Throughout the ages, the concept of ideology has been redefined to include those values that the ruling class thought essential. In this paper, we take a more comprehensive view on the term and analyse the relationship between communist ideology and language as a semiotic structure, together with the changes the communist ideology brought to the Romanian language. Expanding the topic, we approach the way in which this ideology reflected into the school curricula, especially where foreign languages are concerned. Furthermore, as one of the constant features of Romanian communist culture is the colour red, the semantics of red is discussed in relation with the false myth of the blood shed by the working classes who sacrificed for the wellbeing of all. Our aim is to place our analysis in the area where the individual and collective past is brought to the present in order to save it from oblivion and also to reveal the extent to which the working class ideology was a toxic one.

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FORMULY ODPUSTENIA, PREPÁČENIA A OSPRAVEDLNENIA V PRAGMATICKÝCH SÚVISLOSTIACH

Author(s): Jana Sokolová / Language(s): Slovak Issue: 1/2020

This study interprets the forgiveness, pardon and apology formulas in pragmatic contexts. We focus on (a) their interpretation from the perspective of primary and secondary use and on (b) the discoursive success of verb-noun collocations, i.e. collocations of the apologetic verbs and nouns with a common attribute of ‘transgression’. We start from the position of the speaker who presents himself/herself as either the offending or the damaged party. In the role of the offender, he/she either makes an apologetic utterance to the addressee, or asks/begs for an apology, pardon or forgiveness. In the role of the damaged, he/she conveys forgiveness and/or lack thereof, or excuse and/or lack thereof, to the interlocutor. The study focuses on the use of cooperation and politeness strategies (in particular the maxims of generosity and tactfulness) and the public face (we anticipate that the speaker awaits an ‘egocentric’ attitude). The formulas of secondary apologies will be interpreted as a specific politeness strategy that reflects the emphatic nature of the speaker toward the addressee and maximizes speaker's tactfulness. We will show that the Slovak language possesses these functionally supported formulaic and ritualized formulas: phatic and reconciliation formulas, formulas with the ‘lack of understanding’ function, reservations and warnings. The discoursive success of the verb-noun collocations will be identified through correspondence analysis, which renders a correspondence map showing the perimeters of mental apologetic zones in the Slovak language.

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Jazyková interpretácia nemeckého migračného diskurzu (v komparačnom pohľade rokov 2019 a 2015/16)

Author(s): Eva Molnárová,Jana Lauková / Language(s): Slovak Issue: 4/2021

The presented paper is a research dive into the topic of web corpora as well as an analysis of linguistic grasp of the issue of migration from the perspective of social, cultural and cognitive linguistics. The presented research reflects the problem of the construction of the language grasp of this issue in Europe in a selected German mass media discourse. We compare the phenomenon of migration in 2015/2016, when record migration flows to the EU were recorded, and in 2019, when migration kept increasing. The analysis of language grasp of the issue of migration is a part of our scientific research within the project VEGA Xenisms in German and Slovak communications.

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Discriminatory instrumentalization of language

Author(s): Jaroslava Rusinková / Language(s): English Issue: 3/2022

The paper focuses on the description of language used as a tool of discrimination. We understand discrimination as a relationship between two subjects when ontological and axiological certainty is violated. In this sense discriminatory instrumentalisation of language is released at the level of harmful discrimination, unequal treatment and disadvantage. Language use plays a major role in creating a discourse which establishes certain ways of thinking and speaking. The research material is based on conversation about the advertisement for Absolut vodka. The conversation was held on Facebook.

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How (un)freedom is being developed: The linguistic world of one political party in Slovakia concerning liberalism

Author(s): Roman Soóky / Language(s): English Issue: 3/2022

In the globalised world connected via communication technologies and social media, this paper endeavours to understand how politicians succeed in influencing peopleʼs linguistic worlds through their public communication. The patterns in politiciansʼ precise verbal usage convey intended connotations and redefine how people naturally experience the expressions concerning their conceptual knowledge associated with words. The paper thus suggests adjusting the schema of lexical meaning based on the biology of cognition, which acknowledges the uniqueness and diversity of how people understand received expressions and convey various contents in communication.

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Gender asymmetry of Visegrád group languages as reflected by word embeddings

Author(s): Radovan Garabík,Jana Wachtarczyková / Language(s): English Issue: 3/2022

Today, word embeddings have become a standard method in natural language processing, largely due to the availability of large language corpora. The models effectively reflect the semantic relationships between words without any additional linguistic input. Recently, more emphasis has been placed on interpreting the seemingly discriminatory results of some queries, with the goal of de-biasing language models. However, if we consider the vector space to be a reasonably valid model of a linguistic semantic space, does not the asymmetry and subsequent discrimination in word embeddings reflect the (average) discriminatory tendencies inherent in the language? This article explores word embedding models for the Visegrád group languages and we apply basic vector arithmetic to demonstrate the basic language asymmetry present in the models. It is well known that in English models, vector transfers result in eerily accurate predictions when swapping genders (the famous king – man + woman = queen), but these transfers also result in rather uncomplimentary roles for certain occupations (doctor – man + woman = nurse, or computer programmer – man + woman = homemaker). The article explores similar transfers in models of V4 languages - Slovak, Czech, Polish, and Hungarian. With Hungarian gender neutrality, Polish strong generic masculine, and close parallels between Slovak and Czech, we hope to uncover interesting similarities and differences in gender asymmetry in these languages, based on real language data.

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Similarities and differences in linguistic discrimination between Slovak and Hungarian teachers of Hungarian Language and Literature

Author(s): István Jánk / Language(s): English Issue: 3/2022

The purpose of this study is to demonstrate the presence of linguistic discrimination in pedagogical situations, especially in pedagogical evaluation. The paper is based on a survey which involved 502 Hungarian Language and Literature teachers and teacher trainees from Hungary (N = 216), Slovakia (N = 128), Romania (N = 108) and Ukraine (N = 50). Data were primarily collected through a technique similar to matched-guise tests; however, the method of the present research had some additional complexity. The article discusses similarities and differences in linguistic discrimination between Slovak and Hungarian teachers who teach Hungarian Language and Literature. The question it raises is whether there are any differences between the two samples. The results of the mentioned research show that the presence of linguistic discrimination is powerful in both samples, but there are differences in its strength and realization.

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Héritage onomastique du Cameroun : des raisons de s'inquiéter ?

Author(s): Gisèle Mirabelle Céphanie Piebop / Language(s): French Issue: 1-2/2024

The act of naming in Africa in general and in Cameroon in particular assumes functions that are both expressive and identitarian. This act is sociolinguistically marked both in its materiality and in its semiotic forms. The present study attempts to demonstrate that Cameroonian praxematics has close relations with the various human activities that furnish the lives, the habits, the practices and the cosmogony of populations and that constitute their identity traits. As singular features of Cameroonian culture, proper names constitute the country’s cultural heritage. As such, they deserve to be taken seriously and studied scientifically, in order to root them, to promote them more successfully, and above all to protect them energetically, so that other generations can receive them as part of their culture and identity.

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La diversità linguistica in Europa. Osservazioni dal punto di vista delle “piccole” lingue

Author(s): Paul Videsott / Language(s): Italian Issue: 1/2024

The diversity of cultures and languages in the smallest spaces has always been a special feature of Europe. This diversity is expressed not only in the 36 official state languages in Europe, but also and in particular in at least 69 minority languages. There are 52 titular nations and at least 350 (linguistic) minorities in Europe. This heritage still remains partly unknown or misunderstood, also because in most European states there are no official surveys on the size of minorities and/or the language skills of the population. We are faced with the paradox that most states in Europe recognise the existence of national and linguistic minorities, but fail to survey what is a crucial element in the definition of a minority: the ‘number’.The aim of this article is to provide a rough quantitative overview of the languages spoken in Europe, both majority and minority, and then to trace their development in recent decades since the fall of the Berlin Wall using the States with Romance languages as examples. The sobering result is that autochthonous linguistic diversity in Europe is on the decline. But this is not a ‘natural law’, without exception: there are also growing minority communities. The good practices implemented in the Ladin minority in South Tyrol (Italy) reveal e.g. some sociolinguistic framework that allow communities to behave differently from the most and thus contribute to the strengthening of Europe’s linguistic and cultural diversity.

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Restabilirea denumirii corecte a limbii (române) în Republica Moldova

Author(s): Eugenia Bojoga / Language(s): Romanian Issue: 1/2024

The decision of the Chisinau Parliament of March 2 and 6, 2023 to replace the "Moldovan language" with the "Romanian language" was widely commented on in Romania, Republic of Moldova and other countries. But it had the strongest echo in the Russian-speaking space. Presented objectively or distorted, distant or involved, tendentious or truncated, this decision caused an adverse reaction to the political leaders in Moscow, who interpreted the option for the Romanian language of the Republic of Moldova as a betrayal of a common "cause", the imaginary Soviet identity (homo sovieticus). In the present text we will present how the decision of the Chisinau Parliament was presented by Russian news agencies, such as: TASS, RIA Novosti, INTERFAX RU, Krassnaia Vesna, Novyj deni, Lenta.ru, Baltnews, Rambler.ru, Dzen channel et.a. and we will comment on the Russian narratives on this topic.

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Should we avoid the terms ‘justice’ and ‘harm’ when promoting restorative justice to jurists of the Romano-Germanic legal tradition?

Author(s): Katerina Soulou / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2023

Many jurists, especially those coming from the Romano-Germanic (or civil law) legal tradition, are sceptical of restorative justice or simply do not fully understand it, especially in criminal matters, even though it is part of supranational normative documents and laws in many countries. Does the language we use play a role in jurists’ reluctance to embrace restorative justice? What do legal professionals and scholars understand behind the vocabulary we usually use in the restorative justice literature? We will argue that both the terms ‘justice’ and ‘harm’ can be problematic from a legal perspective because they can lead to concepts that may cause confusion or misunderstanding about restorative justice and should therefore be reconsidered. On the one hand, the ‘justice’ part of the term restorative justice – which has already been criticised by restorative justice scholars – presents some questionable ontological assumptions from a legal perspective. On the other hand, jurists tend to understand the term ‘harm’ as referring to private relationships and thus to negotiated transactions and monetary compensation of a civil nature, rather than to criminal activity. So how can we better communicate to jurists the essence of restorative justice in criminal matters in a way that respects their mindset and language?

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Restorative Justice e Dialogic Teaching: un incontro possibile?

Author(s): Carlo Lunardelli / Language(s): Italian Issue: 1/2023

The following contribution examines two pedagogical paradigms which aim at giving centrality to dialogue and interconnectedness: Restorative Justice in Education and Dialogic Teaching. After outlining them, thus laying the foundations for a first comparison between their essential elements, the article highlights the possibility of an ‘encounter’ between these two models. Consequently, some ideas arise from which emerges a need to rethink how to teach law today: an issue whose extreme topicality is highlighted by the task recently assigned to the University by the legislator (legislative decree 150/2022) to contribute to the training of RJ practitioners. In conclusion, the essay briefly asks for further reflections on the potential that could arise from considering dialogue in a dimension not limited to the communicative sphere.

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LINGUISTIC PERFORMANCES IN THE DIALECT OF MOHAMMEDIA: ANALYSIS OF PHONOLOGICAL ASPECTS

Author(s): Samera Abdelati / Language(s): English Issue: 23/2024

Although the state of the art of dialectological and sociolinguistic research concerning Moroccan dialect is nowadays satisfactory when compared to other areas of Northern Africa, the varieties of some regions still lack a comprehensive description and have never been analyzed from a structural point of view. Consequently, the aim of the present paper is to take a closer look at the variety spoken in one of those areas: Mohammedia. One of the possible reasons that lie behind this variety being not much studied may be its proximity, both dialectologically and geographically, to other mainstream cities, that have been the object of historical and linguistic studies for a long time. Thus, with the awareness that exposure to new socio-economic environments and the expansion of social networks are often responsible for language variation, this research aims at providing a description of the Arabic spoken in Mohammedia, and the way this latter is phonologically evolving, through the adoption of a cross-generational point of view. To this end, fieldwork was conducted in the city in August 2022, and data were collected through audio recordings involving informants, all women, who may represent three different age stages: early, middle and later adulthood, with the oldest informant aged 78 years old, and the youngest one 21. In this way, I will try to identify some obsolete as well as new emerging traits of the dialect in question, besides making more general considerations about it.

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THE ROLE OF LANGUAGE IN CHALLENGING GENDER NORMS

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THE ROLE OF LANGUAGE IN CHALLENGING GENDER NORMS

Author(s): Georgiana Văsâi (Ruff),Nadia Nicoleta Morărașu,Cătălina Bălinișteanu-Furdu / Language(s): English Issue: 37/2024

Language holds a fundamental role in shaping and contesting social perceptions of gender. This paper undertakes an exploration into how language functions, as both a reflector and a perpetuator of gender stereotypes, scrutinizing manifestations such as gendered language and, linguistic innovations like gender-neutral pronouns to emphasizes the significance of mindful language usage in fostering inclusive environments.Feminist linguistics examines how language structures reflect and perpetuate gender inequality, advocating for linguistic changes that promote gender equality and challenge patriarchal norms. In adopting a feminist linguistic perspective, our research sheds light on how language crosses with numerous features of identity, thereby influencing individuals’ experiences of gender. These concepts are crucial for challenging gender norms through language. Furthermore, we present a case study of Juno Dawson’s Her Majesty’s Royal Coven, which could be categorized under “Witch Lit” and/ or “Chick Lit”, both labels capturing elements of the novel’s themes and style. While “Witch Lit” emphasizes the supernatural aspects, “Chick Lit” highlights the focus on character-driven narratives and relationships. The novel showcases how language in literature can challenge conventional gender roles and provoke readers to reconsider social expectations. Through these explorations, the paper underlines language’s transformative potential in confronting and reshaping cultural norms surrounding gender. By dissecting language’s multifaceted role, this paper advocates for more inclusive and impartial linguistic practices to foster a society that embraces diversity and respects individuals’ gender identities and expressions.

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The (in)congruence effect of co–speech gestures on language processing

Author(s): Emilija Mustapić Malenica / Language(s): English Issue: 98/2024

The aim of this paper is to explore the phenomenon of co–speech gestures in language processing. As gestures have often been analysed predominantly within the paradigm of the rhetorical tradition, this paper will try to portray their psycholinguistic dimension, which has become increasingly important within the domain of linguistic research. Through use of experimental psycholinguistic methodology and the priming paradigm, I have compared the speed and accuracy of processing of linguistic utterances occurring only in the audio–visual modality accompanied by congruent and incongruent co–speech gestures. The results of the experiment confirmed the hypothesis that incongruence of co–speech gestures has an inhibitory effect on speed and accuracy of processing of the multimodal linguistic message. The participants’ reaction times were slower and accuracy rates lower in conditions in which the semantic congruence between the verbal and the gestural modality was nullified, and the same effect was noticed in both the native language and the first foreign language. This result speaks in favour of the claim that the verbal and gestural representational systems are interconnected and constitute a holistic picture of the mental process.

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