The Process and Factors of Language Shift and Maintenance: Sociolinguistic Research into the Romanian Minority Community in Hungary

This study of the process of language shift and maintenance in the bilingual community of Romanians living in Hungary was based on 40 tape-recorded Romanian sociolinguistic interviews. These were transcribed into computerised form and provide an excellent source of sociolinguistic, contact linguistic and discourse analysis data, making it possible to show the effect of internal and external factors on the bilingual speech mode. The main topics considered were the choice of Romanian and Hungarian in community interactions, factors of language choice, code-switching: introlanguage and interlanguage, reasons for code-switching, the relationship between age and the frequency of code switching in the interview situation, and the unequal competition of minority and majority languages at school.

The Process and Factors of Language Shift and Maintenance: Sociolinguistic Research into the Romanian Minority Community in Hungary"

This study of the process of language shift and maintenance in the bilingual community of Romanians living in Hungary was based on 40 tape-recorded Romanian sociolinguistic interviews. These were transcribed into computerised form and provide an excellent source of sociolinguistic, contact linguistic and discourse analysis data, making it possible to show the effect of internal and external factors on the bilingual speech mode. The main topics considered were the choice of Romanian and Hungarian in community interactions, factors of language choice, code-switching: introlanguage and interlanguage, reasons for code-switching, the relationship between age and the frequency of code switching in the interview situation, and the unequal competition of minority and majority languages at school.

Ideologies of (and in) interpretations and Interpretive Communities

This project had a dual aim: first to survey the (scanty) literature on interpretive communities, and second to apply the concept in a specific context, i.e. in current Hungarian literature. Interpretive communities are closely linked to one of the most disputed issues of literary and theoretical discourse to date, namely canonicity. Not only is the body of the canon selected, presented and interpreted by a specific interpretive community (that of the professionals), but the production of theories themselves, including the theory of interpretive communities and of the canon, is part and parcel of professional interpreters' activity. Thus, while belonging to an interpretive community is a function of other interpretive communities, the entire conceptual system of interpretive communities is a function of a specific (professional) community. Literature in the period of political transition is characterised not only (and not necessarily) by the transitional nature of literary works or literary discourse, but rather by continuous debates about canon and interpretive communities, and here Kalman carried out a number of case studies of current discussions of this nature in Hungary.