Hinweise auf individuelle und gesellschaftliche Mehrsprachigkeit in historischen Schulprogrammen
Indications of individual and societal multilingualism in historical school programs

Summary/Abstract: The present article exemplifies the utilization of the genre of school programs for historical sociolinguistics based on the study of nine Moravian grammar schools with German language of instruction from 1850 to 1910. Beginning in 1849, school programs had to be published in Austria and contained, in addition to a scientific article, qualitative and quantitative data on the school and its students. Using existing school program and data collections, this information is statistically processed and examined for indications of individual and societal multilingualism. The main methodological focus is on dealing with inconsistencies, ambiguities and gaps in the research material. The results show that the multilingualism of students was rarely explicitly included in the school programs. However, records of the mother tongue as well as the attendance of courses in the second national language implicitly indicate the connection between legal provisions and local linguistic conditions and the handling and representation of multilingualism in the individual grammar schools.

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