Author: Irén Annus

Publisher: JATEPress Kiadó

Published: 2015-01-01

Total Pages: 142

ISBN-13: 9633152666

This volume is a collection of studies that analyze cultural encounters in Europe from multidisciplinary perspectives. The book faithfully reflects the research conducted at various departments within the Faculty of Arts and Letters at the University of Szeged, Hungary. The idea for the collection was conceived during a dissemination meeting for a four-year research project involving some of the authors known as Languages in a Network of European Excellence (LINEE), cofounded by the European Commission (FP6, contract 28388), whose generous support also made the publication of this volume possible—for which I would like to extend my gratitude here. Our contemporary world has been persuasively described in a wealth of literature as an era of postmodernity, characterized by a series of particular features, including the development of digital culture and mediation, an intricate interplay between globalization and localization, the compression of time and space, the rapid and constant movement of information and of people as well as the crossing of boundaries, both in symbolic and concrete terms (Lyotard, Harvey, and Appadurai [Modernity], among others). It has been depicted as a transitory period marked by a series of turns—linguistic, cultural and pictorial/visual (e.g. by Rorty, Jameson and Mitchell)—that have captured new mental frameworks for the comprehension of reality(-ies) and resultant principles and processes of knowledge production, also opening up avenues towards pluralism, the politics of identity and difference, and the centrality of issues concerning discourse, power and ideology (Calhoun, Gupta and Ferguson, Fairclough, etc.). Having investigated various aspects of globalization, Appadurai (“Disjuncture”) concluded that one way to understand this phenomenon is through the notion of cultural flows, a concept that captures the speed and dynamism with which particular cultural forms and practices may travel and gain recognition outside of the local cultures within which they appear. He proposed that these global cultural flows can best be explored through five imagined dimensions, often in disjunction with each other: ethnoscapes, mediascapes, technoscapes, financescapes and ideoscapes. Of these, the studies in this volume focus primarily on ethnoscapes and ideoscapes: the cultural flow that both the movement of people, be they students, tourists, immigrants or artists, and that of ideas, from subcultures to teaching paradigms, bring about and the representation of the various encounters these entail in language use, cultural production and identity constructions. This collection of studies tackles some of these issues as they appear in Europe, particularly within the boundaries of Hungary, where they have received particular attention after Hungary joined the European Union in 2004. Hungary’s accession introduced not only EU rules, norms and expectations to the country but also encouraged the flow of people, cultural exchange and cooperation within the EU in numerous ways, such as research projects and academic exchange programs (e.g. Tempus and Erasmus) and cultural projects, such as the European Capital of Culture award program. In the implementation of the various programs and broad cooperation upon which a united Europe may emerge, it is imperative to ensure communication; thus, language teaching and learning and the attainment of a particular level of proficiency have received particular attention within the EU. All this, in a broader context, can be regarded as part of the problematization tied to the word “European,” including the construction and meaning of a European identity, particularly in relation to other, such as national, regional and local, identities, while not being blind to other powerful factors, such as ethnicity, religion and gender, that also shape self-identities in compelling ways. The authors in this volume represent a multiplicity of academic fields, from linguistics and literary criticism to cultural anthropology and cultural studies. They share the characteristic of reaching across traditional methods and disciplines, thus typically applying an interdisciplinary approach in their investigations, all of which focus on the construction, mediation, outcome or impact of cultural encounters in a variety of contexts. Except for one, all of these studies explore particular aspects of contemporary issues and practices. As reflected in the subtitle of the volume, the papers have been organized around three major themes: language use, cultural interaction and identity construction. The first set of studies investigates the significance of language in the postmodern age. Globalization is often associated with tendencies towards standardization and homogenization (e.g. Featherstone), in the course of which “English is becoming the global language, and culture is becoming more and more dominated by American and Western European models” (Smith 14). In this context, issues such as the way in which English is used in the global community, the forms of power English may represent in particular local communities, or the washback effect this global role may have on emerging techniques used in the English as a Foreign Language (EFL) classroom, require further investigation.