Sándor, Rot

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THE HUNGARIAN LANGUAGEIN THE MACROSTRUCTURE OF HUNGARIAN CULTURESÁNDOR ROTzyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA~ Édes anyanyelvünk! (Our sweet mother tongue!) These lofty words ra-diating a great amount of emotive information, and therefore - having a"high cost" (see details in: Rot 1977) were born among the broad masses ofthe Hungarian people who firmly decided to preserve through millennia oftheir stormy history interweaven with uneven fights and bloodthirsty wars,against fierce enemies, with terrible yokes and deprivation the most preciousheritage of their ancestors - their mother tongue.And this passionate fight for language survival which contributed atlarge to "the linguistic miracle of Hungarian" (Rot 1986) reflected under-consciously the wisdom of the broad masses of population that "a peoplelive in their native tongue".In its "drift" down time and space (Sapir 1949, 150) the Hungarianlanguage, due to the dynamic trajectory of the action of its "intralinguistic"and "extralinguistic" actuation riddles (or motive forces) (Rot 1986a) hasalways fulfilled its main role of the most important tools of commuicationand a means of expressing feeling and has achieved its present-day richness,and prestige.The macrosystem of Present-Day Hungarian which comprises its stan-dards (terrned "irodalmi nyelv"), its regional varieties, Le. the vernac-ulars used by the Hungarian minorities in Rumania (mainly Trausylva-nia), Czecho and Slovakia, Yugoslavia, the Soviet Union (primarily in Sub-carpathia or Transcarpathia or the Carpathlan Ukraine), Austria (mainlythe Burgenland) (see: Rot 1988,821-831), their written and spoken manifes-tations, beginning with let us say the works by Gyula lllyés, and ending witha lecture of Lajos Lörincze "Édes anyanyelvünk" breadeasted by the "RádióKossuth", and non-standard, including colloquial Hungarian (called "köz-nyelv"), its regional (or territorial dialects) terrned "nyelvjárások" and "táj-szólások" (Imre 1971) and sociolects (including slang [narned jassznyelv]),professional jargons, etc. is part and parcel of the macrostructure of con-temporary Hungarian culture.What place does the macrosystem of Present-Day Hungarian in themacrostructure of the contemporary Hungarian culture occupy?Before embarking on a detailed analysis of this rather complicated prob-lem it is necessary to clear up some crucial points concerning the "plane of551SÁNDOR ROTcontent" (Hjelmslev) of the Hung. termzyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA"kultúra" 'culture' (recorded in. 1790; TESz. II. 666).Areal complex etymologizing has given evidence that the gene tic sourceof'.borrowing of the Hung. term "kultúra" goes back to MLat. cultu ra re'tilage of soil' (ef. Lat. colere 'to take care: cultivate'). Its primary historicalsource of taking over being the Fr. culture respectively cultu rel 'cultural'(ef. MoHG kulturell, E. cultural, It. culturale, Pol. kulturalnYt etc.), and hishistorical source ofborrowing the MoHG (die) Kultur 'tillage of soil, rearingof production (of bees, oysters, fish, silk, etc.)'; (see: also Bulg. kultura,Czech kultura, Serbo-Cr. kultura, Rum. cultura, SIk. kultura, Dan. kultur ,Swed. kultur , (a lexico-semantic internationalism ).In Hungarian itself "the derivative structure of the monosemes"(Rot 1987, 18-9), i. e. the notion of this lexical unit has during.centuriesdeveloped the E. lexical unit culture possesses [it includes some monosemesthe E. terms civilization and education display]; kultúraátvétel 'accultura-tion'; kultúraellenes 'opposedjinjurious to culturej civilization'; kultúrálatlan'uncultured, uncivilized, uneducated, barbarous, savage, unpolished, low-brow'; kultúráltság 'civilization, culture, refinement'; kultúrbetegség 'civi-lization disease, disease of civilization'; kulturegyezmény 'agreement con-cerning cultural relations; cultural pact'; kulturélet 'cultural life'; kultúrér-ték 'cultural value'; kultúrforradalom 'cultural revolution'; kuliur front 'cul-tural front'; kultúrigény 'cultural demands (Pl.)'; kultúrkapcsolatok (Pl.)'cultural relations'; kultúrmisszió 'cultural mission'; kultúrpolitika 'policy of(national) education'; kultúrszomj 'yearningjthirst of education', and manyothers [See: MÉrtSz. IV, 497-501; OMASZ, 1185-1186]).The specialliterature devoted to problems of culture, including Hungar-ian culture is full of controversy. We have come across more that thirty-fivedifferent definitions what culture is beginning with the statementthat it is"the best which has been said and thought in the world" (M. Arnold) andending with the definition that it is "all that men and woman have madeof their world - their politics, their economics, their families, their work,their gestures and movements, their machnies, their art and artifacts ...evething" (Sklar, 1976, 5-6). An insightfullook into the problems of 'cul-ture" was given by A. Sarbu (1986). A possible "common core" in thisdiveristy has been found by D. Lee, for whom "culture is a: symbolic sys-tem which transforms the physical reality, what is there, into experiencedreality" (quoted in Rozsnyai 1986, 188).In our opinion Hungarian culture is rather complicated dynamic socio-historicai macrostructure which fixes and objectivizes the social consciousof the epoch.552THE HUNGARIAN LANGUAGE ...In the macrostructure of contemporary Hungarian culture some slightrelics of the ancient "ergative" type of Uralic culture with its linear causalityin reflecting the reality, its linguistic taboos, the spoors of the cult of the bearand shamanism in folklore; features of the "nominative" type of culturej andthe domination of the "analytic" type of culture characteristic in Europeancultures (details about these types of culture see in: Rot 1982, 149-174).The "dominant" of contemporary Hungarian culture is the language. ,Thisidea was brilliantly understood and suggested by the great poet Mihály Vö-rösmarty (1821-1907) who exclaimed "a nemzet a nyelvében él" 'the nationlives in its language'.Developing the ideas of M. A. K. Halliday (1970) and ruling out hismodern semantic positivism we have made an attempt to explain the no-tion of contemporary Hungarian culture in semiotic terms and to see whatthe relation of Present-Day Hungarian to the non-language parts of themacrostructure of contemporary Hungarian culture is.Within the framework of semiotics of culture J. Odmark studied theproblems of the interaction of American English and American culture(Odmark 1981). He carne to the conclusion that this interaction constitutesmuch more than "just the expansion and modification of the vocabulary:language inforrns the structure of the culture of which it is part as the sys-tem of constraints and prescriptions governing social interaction influencethe nature of language change" (Odmark 1981, 39).But to what extent is this assumption in fact true, in what sense is it avalid observation which could be applied in revealing the essence of the inter-action of the macrosystem of Present-Day Hungarian and the macrostrue-ture of contemporary Hungarian? Our investigations have shown that thiskeen observation of J. Odmark is in general conclusive for the study of theinterrelation between the macrosystem of Present-Day Hungarian arid themacrostructure of contemporary Hungarian too.However, it should be expanded by the conclusions made by J. Lotmanand B. Uspensky who maintain that the structures and sub-structures ofsignification in culture are language based, that is, they have secondarlymodelling function which derives from the rules governing language. Theymade it plain that "against the backgroung of non-culture, culture appearsas a system ofsigns" (Lotman and Uspensky 1978,211), which includes themacrosystem of language as its "dominant" .Thus the organization of Present-Day Hungarian determines the orga-nization of the non-language parts of the macrostructure of contemporaryHungarian culture as a whole. In some instances, there is no perceptibleinternal organization in the non-language parts of the macrostructure ofHGFEDCBA5 5 3'SÁNDOR ROTcontemporary Hungarian culture. The modelling function of the Present-Day Hungariari language only becomes apparent when viewed within thecontext of the semiotic system (See the works of Ch. Peirce, W. James,Ch. Morris, Th. Seboek, Th. Vinner, V. Voigt on problems of semiotics).J. Lotman and B. Uspensky suggest that the relations among structuresof culture be considered as a set of cocentric circles, with natural languagelocated at the centre and the system lacking any internal organization onthe periphery (Lotman and Uspensky 1978, 213). The dependence of thestructure of non-language parts of the macrostructure of culture on thestructure of the language encourages an approach to the macrostructure ofcontemporary Hungarian culture through the macrosystem of Present-DayHungariari. However, if we turn theory to concrete analysis, certaln difficul-ties become readily apparent. Before looking more closelyat the limitationsof an approach to the macrostructure of contemporary Hungarian culturethrough Present-Day Hungarian, we would like to briefly outline some ofthe ways in which non-language parts of the macrostructure of culture andlanguage interact.Our investigations have shown that the reciprocal relationship betweenlanguage and non-language parts of the macrostructure of contemporaryHungarian culture is being manifested by the fact that on the one hand, therules of the whole macrostructure of culture derive from those governing themacrosystem of Present-Day Hungarian, On the other hand, the non-lan-guage parts of the macrostructure of contemporary Hungarian culture affectchanges in Present-Day Hungarian, not only on the level of lexis, e. g., H.:zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBAGMK (gazdasági munkaközösség) 'small private enterprise'; lizing 'leasing(an instrument conveying property to another for definite period, or at will,usually in consideration of rent or other periodical compensation)'; popéne-kes 'popsinger'; alternatív kerekasztal tömörülés 'the round table group ofparties and organizations which were in opposition to the Hungariart Social-ist Workers' Party'; and many other neologisms where its influence is mostobvious but also on other levels of the language, including the syntactical,word-formational and even morphological ones.Referenees:Halliday, M. A. K., 1970: Language Structure and Language Function: in: Lyons J. (ed).,"New Horizons in Linguistics". Harmodsworth.Imre, S., 1971: A mai magyar nyelvjárások rendszere. Budapest.Lotman, J. and Uspensky, B., 1978: On the Semiotic Mechanism of Culture. "New Lit-o erary History" vol. II: 211-232.Odmark, J., 1981: The American Idiom and the Semiotics of Culture, "Annales Univ.Sciént. Budapestiensis de Rolando Eötvös nominatae, Sectio Linguística" , XII.HGFEDCBA5 5 4THE HUNGARIAN LANGUAGE ...Rot, S., 1977: J. D. Salinger's Oeuvre in the Light of Information Theory and Stylistics ofDecoding; in: Frank, T. (ed.) "Studies in English and American", vol. IV., Budapest.Rot, S., 1983: A kárpáti nyelvi area két- és többnyelvűségének nyelvészeti kérdései; in:Balázs, J. (ed), Areális nyelvészeti tanulmányok. BudapestRot, S., 1986: Outlines of Present-Day Hungarian, Budapest.Rot, S.: 1987: Problems of Modern British and American Slang (4th ed.). Budapest,Rot, S., 1988: A magyar nyelv szerepe a kárpátizmusok makroglosszáinak kialakulásában.A mai magyar nyelv makrorendszere és regionalizmusai; in: Kiss, J. and Szűts, L.(ed.) "A magyar nyelv rétegződése". Budapest.Rot, S. 1989: Magyar-ukrán nyelvi kölcsönhatás; in: Balázs, J. (ed.) "Nyelvünk a Duna-tájon". Budapest.Rozsnyai, B., 1986: High Culture, Popular Culture, and the Teaching of American Studiesin Hungary; in: Kretzoi Ch. (ed.) "High and Low in American Culture". Budapest.Sapir, E., 1949: Language. An Introduction to the Study of Speech. New York.Sarbu , A., 1986: Concepts of Culture, or Our Image of America; in Kretzzoi, Ch. (ed.),"High and Low in American Culture". Budapest.Sklar, R., 1976: Cultural History and American Studies; in: American Studies" ed. byWalker, R.H. Wesport (Conn.)XWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA555

The hungarian language in the macrostructure of hungarian culture

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The hungarian language in the macrostructure of hungarian culture

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