THE LINGUISTIC CONTENT OF TWO PARLOUR GAMES: THE „SZÉKELY EKTIVITI” AND THE „SZÉKELY AKTÍV” – BRIDGING MARKETING AND LINGUISTICS

Abstract

The “Székely ektiviti” or Szekler Activity parlour game was created in 2009 and has been commercialized since 2011. The main difference between the Szekler activity game and the original version lies in the linguistic content (apart from some minor differences in the rules of the game). As its name suggests it contains 100 cards with Szekler dialect words (at least considered as such). In 2012 the creators added 50 more cards, thus the game consists of a total number of 300+150 tasks. The present study aims to analyse the linguistic content of the game, namely to examine how and in what sense are the words/phrases “Szekler” and what conscious or hidden ideologies are reflected in this language corpus.  In order to have a comparative overview, the paper also analyses the linguistic content of a similar game originating from the same context – the „Székely aktív” game. The two parlour games are also discussed from a marketing perspective, focusing on how they fit into the branding trends prevailing across different economic sectors in Szeklerland.