Hungarian Research Centre for Pragmatics

After the first round-table conference on pragmatics having been held in Budapest on 15 May 2012, Enikő Németh T. (University of Szeged, Department of General Linguistics) organized another round-table discussion in Szeged on 11 October 2012. The first talk was given by Enikő Németh T., who gave an account of the history of pragmatics research at the University of Szeged. She also talked about the first courses in pragmatics (that did not have the name Pragmatics at that time) she taught at university and some research into pragmatics recently being conducted at the University of Szeged. The introductory speech of Enikő Németh T. was followed by two presentations focusing on two subfields of pragmatics being studied at the University of Szeged. Lívia Ivaskó (University of Szeged, Department of Communication and Media Studies) explained the importance of integrating the findings of the theoretical and experimental research into pragmatics. Furthermore, she talked about the experiments being carried out by her and under her supervision and the findings thereof by comparing them to international trends. In her presentation, given in English, Suszczynska Malgorzata highlighted some current issues pertaining to politeness and impoliteness research in countries behind the Iron Curtain, i.e. countries in Central and Eastern Europe such as Hungary.

The presentations were followed by an open discussion and a brainstorming session in order to decide how a professional community dealing with pragmatics should be set up. The participants of the conference were given the opportunity to propose their ideas concerning the organizational framework of the community and the different ways of cooperation within the community. During this discussion, Enikő Németh T. announced her intention of establishing a national research centre, the so-called Hungarian Research Centre for Pragmatics. The participants of the discussion were unanimous in welcoming this announcement.