HUNGARIAN STUDIES 13. No. 1. Nemzetközi Magyar Filológiai Társaság. Akadémiai Kiadó Budapest [1998-99]

Gábor Tolcsvai Nagy: From the Ideal of Unity to the Practice of Heterogeneity: Modernization Processes in the Hungarian Language Community

FROM THE IDEAL OF UNITY TO THE PRACTICE OF HETEROGENEITY: MODERNIZATION PROCESSES IN THE HUNGARIAN LANGUAGE COMMUNITY GÁBOR TOLCSVAI NAGY Department of Finno-Ugrian Studies, Helsinki, Finland In recent years the history of language has meant the history of sounds, words and rules. We know that tremendous efforts, such as the concept of Laut­verschiebung, have been made to interpret language as the history of regular changes. Meanwhile the grammar of language has meant the representation of language in timeless models of structures, langue or universal grammars. Both types create special scientific frames, or I could say narratives intentionally in­dependent of individual speakers and communities. This independence was meant to be the basis of the objectivistic standpoint necessary to describe lan­guage an sich. But in this long process language has been deprived of something essential, of speaking and understanding man and community. Beginning in the 1970s and with growing influence, the necessary balance has started to be re­stored in the works of sociolinguistics (Labov 1972, Hymes 1974, Romaine 1982), functional linguistics (Halliday 1985, Givón 1984), and in the cognitive approaches (e.g. Schwarz 1992). This change has made clear the distinction between grammatics and linguistics as formulated by Ralph Fasold (Fasold 1992). The information system, which is the basis of this latter view, not in a mechanistic manner but rather in a communication system where representation and cognitive processes of text creating and text understanding are the central factors always within a setting and a situation, makes evident the fact that lan­guage can be interpreted as a functional entity in an ecosystem (Strohner 1990). This theoretical trend, which has its origin in the views of Humboldt, Peirce an Eco, was elaborated by Halliday and Givón in grammar, by Hymes, Labov and others in the concepts of language variety and variable, speech community, do­main, network, and by cognitive scientists (McClelland-Rumelhart [editors], 1986, Strohner 1995, Taylor 1995) particularly in the ideas of representation and connectionism. In this respect the self-referential and the self-reflexive nature of language and semiosis in general is uncovered, however not entirely as in the frame of Hungarian Studies 13/1 (1998/99) 0236-6568/99/$ 5.00 ©99 Akadémiai Kiadó, Budapest

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