Kontra, Miklós

Professor
Department of English Language Teacher Education and Applied Linguistics
Office: Room 2202, Arts Faculty
Office Phone: +36-62-544284
Email:
Areas of specialization: Sociolinguistics, Bilingualism, Language Contact, Applied Linguistics, Foreign Language education, Linguistic Human Rights

• Degrees:
  MA in Russian language and literature and English language and literature, University of Debrecen, 1974
  PhD in Linguistics, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, 1987
  Doctor of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (DSc) in Linguistics, 2006

• Awards:
  Széchenyi Professorial Award (1997–2000)

• Courses taught:
  1974–2007: English descriptive linguistics; Sociolinguistics; Language, law and education; Sound change in American English; Introduction to applied linguistics; Hungarian and English intonation in contact; Hungarian-American bilingualism; Bevezetés a társasnyelvészetbe (=Introduction to Sociolinguistics)

I have been teaching linguistics in universities in Hungary (JATE, KLTE, SZTE) and abroad (e.g. Indiana University, USA, Joensuu University, Finland, etc. ) for over three decades. I am director of the English Applied Linguistics Doctoral Program in the U of Szeged. *** I have been a leading researcher in the Linguistics Institute of the Hungarian Academy of Sciencies since 1985. I was a Fulbright Research Fellow at Indiana University in 1992/93 and at Michigan State University in 2003. I held an ACLS research fellowship at Michigan State University in 1995/96. *** Editorial memberships held: Journal of Sociolinguistics (1997–2006), Language Policy (2001–2009), Studies in Language Variation book series, Benjamins (2006–), Modern Nyelvoktatás (1995–), Alkalmazott Nyelvtudomány (2001–), Sociolinguistic Studies (2007-), Linguistic Diversity and Language Rights book series, Multilingual Matters (2004–), Porta Linguarum (2004—).

• Recent publications:
  - Sustainable Linguicism. In: Frans Hinskens, ed., Language Variation – European Perspectives, 97–126. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 2006.
  - Tove Skutnabb-Kangas, Miklós Kontra and Robert Phillipson. 2006. Getting Linguistic Human Rights Right: A Trio Respond to Wee (2005). Applied Linguistics 27: 318–324.
  - Hungarian In- and Outside Hungary. In: Ammon, Ulrich et al, eds, Sociolinguistics/Soziolinguistik, 2nd completely revised and extended edition, Volume 3: 1811–1818. Berlin/New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2006.
  - Changing mental maps and morphology: Divergence caused by international border changes. In: David Britain and Jenny Cheshire, eds., Social Dialectology: In honour of Peter Trudgill, 173–190. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2003.
  Kontra Miklós, szerk., Nyelv és társadalom a rendszerváltáskori Magyarországon (=Language and Society in Hungary at the Fall of Communism). Budapest: Osiris Kiadó, 2003. 372 pp. [Except for pp. 256–322. and pp. 363–371, all the book was written by M.K.]

• Most important publications:
  - Kontra Miklós, szerk., Nyelv és társadalom a rendszerváltáskori Magyarországon (=Language and Society in Hungary at the Fall of Communism). Budapest: Osiris Kiadó, 2003. 372 pp. [Except for pp. 256–322. and pp. 363–371, all the book was written by M.K.]
  - Hungarian verbal puzzles and the intensity of language contact. Journal of Sociolinguistics 5(2001): 163–179.
  - Multilingua, Volume 19–1/2(2000): 1–195. [Special Issue: Language contact in East-Central Europe] Edited by Miklós Kontra. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter.
  - Miklós Kontra, Robert Phillipson, Tove Skutnabb-Kangas, Tibor Várady, eds, 1999. Language: A Right and a Resource. Approaching Linguistic Human Rights. Budapest: Central European University Press. xiii+346 pp.
  - Pintzuk, Susan; Miklós Kontra; Klára Sándor; & Anna Borbély: The effect of the typewriter on Hungarian reading style. (Working Papers in Hungarian Sociolinguistics, No. 1, September 1995) Budapest: Linguistics Institute, Hungarian Academy of Sciences. Pp. 30.

• Memberships:
  MTA Nyelvtudományi Bizottság (2002–); MTA Alkalmazott Nyelvészeti Bizottság ill. MTA Alkalmazott Nyelvészeti Munkabizottság (1995–2008); American Dialect Society (1986–); Linguistic Association of Canada and the United States (1979–1993), European Society for the Study of English (1994–); MTA Magyar Tudományosság Külföldön Elnöki Bizottság (1996–); Modern Filológiai Bizottság (1984–);

Cooperation in research with Peter Trudgill (England, Switzerland), Dennis Preston (USA), Peter Auer (Germany), Tove Skutnabb-Kangas (Denmark), Robert Phillipson (Denmark), István Csernicskó (Ukraine), Sándor Szilágyi N. (Rumania), Lajos Göncz (Serbia), and Jiří Nekvapil (Czech Republic).

¬ BACK