What We Need is Good Communication: Vernacular Globalization in Some Hungarian Speech

Abstract

This study is a cultural interpretivist investigation of the system of meanings that shapes the use of the term “communication” (kommunikáció) in Hungarian citizens’ assessments of political communication. Using a combination of the diary-interview method and semantic analysis of mediated texts, I find that Hungarian citizens distinguish good communication from bad using a set of local standards (veracity, morality, quality, effectiveness, and effects on society). I also find that citizens’ communication ideal and the cultural premises animating that ideal are closely aligned with the tenets of translocal communication culture, and I argue that these meanings serve as evidence of the vernacular globalization of that culture. I also discuss how citizens’ metadiscourse becomes a unique site for the local articulation of translocal meanings.