Plenary speakers

The Intercultural Confluences Research Centre of the Department of Humanities, Faculty of Economics, Socio-Human Sciences and Engineering, Miercurea Ciuc, Sapientia Hungarian University of Transylvania, organizes the International Conference Encounters in/among Language, Literature, and Arts at the Miercurea Ciuc campus of the university on 22-23 March, 2024. The working language of the conference is English.

CALL FOR PAPERS 2024

PROGRAMME

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EKPHRASIS AT THE CROSSROADS OF DICHOTOMIES – PROBLEMATIZING THROUGH EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE

Liviu Lutas, Linnaeus University

Ekphrasis has been a concept that has been at the core of theoretical controversies during centuries. This might seem expected, since it had a dichotomous nature already from the start, in ancient Roman rhetorics. Indeed, its definition as “a speech that brings the subject matter vividly before the eyes” (Webb 2009) points to the existence of two different fields that are brought together: the speech and a subject described through that speech. Scholars throughout the centuries have insisted on the complex relation between the two different fields, but even the theoretical discourse has been repleted with by different dichotomies. Thus, for instance, from the beginning, the dichotomy absentia-presentia was all important, since the object described was not supposed to be physically present for the listener. Later on, when ekphrasis became rather a literary figure, the dichotomy words-images became central, when Leo Spitzer (1955) defined it as “the poetic description of a pictorial or sculptural work of art”. Subsequent scholars used other dichotomies, such as “notional” vs. “actual” ekphrasis according to John Hollander (1995), real vs. fictitious text according to Claus Clüver (1998), “media representation” vs. “transmediation” as in intermediality theory (Lars Elleström 2014), human subject or nonhuman object (Bill Brown 2016), or even subject vs. object or mind vs. matter in general, as in new materialist approaches. This lecture will problematize some of these dichotomies, as well as some classifications, on the basis of an empirical experiment, being thus itself at the junction of a dichotomy: theory vs. empiricism. The aim is however not to resolve the existing dichotomies enumerated above, but rather to show how the friction between opposites can form such an innovative and time-enduring device as ekphrasis has proven to be.

LINGUISTIC ENCOUNTERS IN PARTICIPATORY RESEARCH

Csanád Bodó, Eötvös Loránd University

Empirical research on human communication has always been based on encounters: these take place between researchers and the participants involved in the research. When we place these encounters at the heart of our inquiry, i.e. when conducting participatory research, we often face difficulties in creating a language that is accessible to all participants. In my talk, I argue that the language of encounters cannot be separated from the realisation of involvement and engagement in research. I support this argument with an example from our own research with participants in a Moldavian multilingual village. The research focused on the co-design of a language-centred board game that provided an opportunity for representation, analysis and reflection on the village's language practices. The game is the culmination of several years of participatory research and aims to explore interpretations of practices that are widely discussed as threatened, allowing for a critical approach to language endangerment rhetorics. In my analysis I draw on the ethnographic encounters of eight sessions in which players engaged both with each other and the board game's creators. The example demonstrates that while an innovative representation of marginalised language practices does not in itself guarantee the subversion of language endangerment rhetorics, it can make new knowledge more accessible to a wider audience.