In search of the common language. A survey of linguistic choices in contemporary children's books

Csizmadia, Gabriella Petres (2024) In search of the common language. A survey of linguistic choices in contemporary children's books. HUNGARIAN STUDIES: A JOURNAL OF THE INTERNATIONAL ASSOCIATION FOR HUNGARIAN STUDIES AND BALASSI INSTITUTE, 38 (1). pp. 50-62. ISSN 0236-6568

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Abstract

In my paper I analyze contemporary works of children's literature in which linguistic choices as well as the alternating and mixing of languages in the narrative play particularly important roles. Such children's books either present the same narrative in alternating languages or switch between multiple languages within a single narrative. Examples include the string of children's stories Benőke és Hanga. A kétnyelvű testvérek – Benőke a Hanga. Dvojjazyční súrodenci [Benőke and Hanga. The Bilingual Siblings] (2021) by Diána Marosz and Lucia Molnár-Satinská, which relates the same plot side by side in Hungarian and Slovak, or the children's crime story Winter-vakáció. Nyári kaland Pöstyénben [The Winter's Vacation. A Summer Adventure in Piestany] (2021) by Ágnes B. Mánya, which also contains sections in Hungarian, Slovak, English, German and Latin. In my analysis, I focus on interpreting the function of using multilinguality and opting for the use of a certain language, and also on exploring the effects the mixing of languages and multilinguality can have on the decoding of the narrative.

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