A magyar nyelvhasználat közoktatási intézményekben
Hungarian Language Use in Public Educational Institutions

Summary/Abstract: In Romania in the 2018–2019 school year, more than 121,000 Hungarian pupils studied in their mother tongue, mostly in Hungarian medium or Hungarian-Romanian dual stream schools. The linguistic environment of schools is a particularly important issue, as it is the first place where young people encounter the country’s official language policy, determining their attitudes toward multilingualism and how they will think about their mother tongue. The aim of this paper is to examine the differences in the top-down elements of linguistic landscape and language use between Hungarian and mixed schools and whether these institutions comply with the formal linguistic regulations regarding “schoolscapes.” The study argues that the linguistic landscape and internal and external communication of Hungarian and dual stream schools are very different: while in the former the mother tongue of the students is visible and frequently used, in the latter the official language of the country is the dominant one, and in many cases schools do not meet even the minimally regulated linguistic requirements. While most previous research has studied “schoolscapes” through qualitative research or case studies, this study uses survey-based online techniques to acquire representative data in the matter.

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