Linguistic Concepts of Sándor Karácsony from the perspective of Modern Linguistics

Abstract

LINGUISTIC CONCEPTS OF SÁNDOR KARÁCSONY FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF MODERN LINGUISTICS

(Abstract)

Sándor Karácsony (1891–1952) was a thorough connoisseur of 19th and 20th-century linguistic trends, primarily based on Wundtian ethnopsychology, he developed his complex social psychological system, centered on the human being and with educability as its main question. In his comprehensive, interdisciplinary studies of language, cognition, psychology, history, ethics, and other topics, he sought to answer whether humans are educable and, if so, how. Therefore, his system of thought is highly pedagogical, raising important considerations from the perspective of contemporary Hungarian native language education. His divisive theory at that time resonates now strongly with the most modern principles of language education. Emphasis on communication-centeredness, starting from context and speech situations, contrastivity, the use of real, live language data, observation of language functioning, equality of languages and dialects, sentence-centeredness, child-centeredness, and consideration of age related characteristics of students all demonstrate how innovative, current, and modern Karácsony's thinking about language is. His ideas are reflected in modern linguistic trends such as communication theory, speech act theory, cognitive linguistics, generative-transformational grammar, sociolinguistics, or pragmatics.

Keywords: social psychology, educability, human-centeredness, language and thought, native language education.