Ethnolinguistic Vitality in Minority Schoolscape

Abstract

School is often said to be a representation of society because its primary aim is to promote integration into society. This study of the landscape elements of minority language schools suggests that this type of linguistic landscape may not only reflect a change in linguistic dominance but can also play a complementary role compared to the external, out-of-school world. In this paper, the authors attempt to explore a new way of interpreting the notion of the linguistic landscape of schools. The novelty of this approach lies in the application of a spatial theoretical concept, where the schoolscape is defined as an element of autopoietic space—a self-constituting spatial element. Within this autopoietic framework, markers of ethnolinguistic vitality in the linguistic landscape of minority language schools are identified, and a set of criteria is established that can be applied to other communities. The conclusions are drawn from a comparative analysis of the linguistic landscapes of Hungarian-medium schools in Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia.

Keywords

• linguistic schoolscape
• minority schools
• ethnolinguistic vitality
• autopoiesis