Research topic I

E U R O P E A N  C U L T U R E — H U N G A R I A N   C U L T U R E

Hungary’s relationship to the culture of the most important countries of the az European Union after World War II  (1945–1981)

      The research seeks an answer to the question as to how Hungarian culture has been connected to European culture since the time when the idea of a European Union first appeared, and what connections Hungarian culture endeavours to establish with the leading nations of the EU. In the course of our research we wish to reveal the history of Hungary’s connections with France, Austria, Germany, England, Sweden, Italy and Finland. We intend to show what efforts Hungary, with its new democratic system, made in 1945 to establish cultural and scientific links with France, Austria, Great Britain, Germany, Switzerland, Sweden, Italy and Finland. We study the relationships of the various fields of Hungarian culture, science and philosophy to mainstream European culture, science, and also arts, music and literature.
        An important objective of the research programme is to show what changes took place in Hungary’s cultural diplomacy after the Communists came into power and the cold war began. It is shown that Hungary’s cultural orientation became unilateral, and the country suspended her cultural relations with the western world for almost two decades.       

Hungarian culture has deep European roots, and did not cease to be European even during the years of the cold war. We also wish to analyze the connections of Hungarian culture to the rest of Europe in the first period of the détente.       

In spite of the short period of time that has elapsed since the change of the political system, we intend to deal with cultural and scientific connections between Hungary and the rest of Europe since the change of the political system in Hungary.

Academic staff participating in the research

Schedule:

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  1998: gathering material from domestic and foreign periodicals and books

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  1999: processing the material, writing studies

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  2000:  synthesis, editing and publishing a volume

Research topic 2

P O L I T I C A L   A N D    D I P L O M A T I C
T E R M I N O L O G Y  A N D   P H R A S E O L O G Y

(in English, French, German, Italian, Finn, Hungarian and Russian languages)  

   Analysing the Hungarian, German, English, French and Russian translations of political and diplomatic texts produced in the languages of the European Union with the methods of applied linguistics. Studying linguistics concord in these texts, producing studies and essays in liguistics, lexicography, lexicology, semantics and morpho-syntaxis. Publishing the studies in a monographic volume.       

Analysing diplomatic terminology and phraseology of the English, French, German, Italian, Finn, Hungarian and Russian languages, based on language corpora consisting of official EU documents. — The research is to be extended to functional tendencies within the languages concerned (lexicalization, syntagmatization, morpho-syntactic features) and to stylistic questions.
        The research largely relies on the results of domestic and foreign lexicography, contrastive abnalyses and dictionary writing. — The novelty of the research is that experts, whose mother tongue is Hungarian but who all speak 2-3 foreign languages, perform research into an area that is extremely important today: the language of politics, and within that, diplomacy.  

Academic staff participating in the research

Schedule: :

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  1998: professional consultations with domestic and foreign linguists, translators, EU-diplomats and other professionals,

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  1999: continuing library work, further consukltation with foreign experts if necessary, and study trips to the Institutes of Interpreter and Translator Training in Vienna and Brussels 

2000: editing and publishing the studies