Journal Article

Language and identity in contemporary Hungarian fiction in Slovakia

Judit Görözdi

2024

Overview

The paper explores the literary expression of Slovak-Hungarian cultural and linguistic interactions in 21st-century Hungarian literature in Slovakia. It examines texts or text fragments that approach the issue from a linguistic perspective, or make visible the complexity of the interaction and its implications through the language of the literary text. Authors of Hungarian literature written in Slovakia use various strategies to represent the multicultural environment or to express the complexity of minority identity, which is not homogeneous, is marked by the interaction of cultures/languages/mentalities, and is confronted with the cultural and linguistic patterns of the majority. These textual strategies respond to Slovak-Hungarian contact from a contemporary minority perspective, showing parallels with the strategies of postcolonial literatures that articulate their particularity and peripheral position in relation to the “centre”, or to its codes and patterns. The analysed texts by Lajos Grendel, Péter Hunčík, Zoltán Szalay, Norbert György, and Pál Szász employ diverse strategies, all unified by a shared aim: to express distinct forms of minority identity through the language of literary text.

• Publisher: Slovak Academy of Sciences, Institute of Slovak Literature
• Subject: hungarian fiction in slovakia / linguistic interaction / linguistic strategy / minority cultural identity