Discrediting Newspeak: Hungary in 1954
Type de matériel :
70
In 1954, in Budapest, the linguist Iván Fónagy and his colleague Katalin Soltész published “A mozgalmi nyelvről” (On the language of the labour movement). Fónagy’s “Languages within Language” was published in 2006, a year after his death. In 1954, Fónagy and Soltész had not only described the characteristics of the language used in official writings and events, but also how it was debasing communication within society at large. A particular reason they described was the lack of culture of a large part of the political leadership and the fact that using an impoverished form of language was so easy. But they had already shown in 1954, with impeccable style, that this phenomenon was not the sole preserve of Hungarian communism. Fifty years later, Fónagy returned to the power of attraction of certain types of discourse that are still a feature of social communication. A work of original thinking that significantly broadens perspectives on the “newspeak,” which the Hungarians call the “tongue of beech.”
Réseaux sociaux