Continuity in the Language Question?

Contexts of Superintendent János Kis’s 1830 Article

Abstract

In this study, I attempted to deliver a contextual analysis of an article that was published in 1830 in the journal Tudományos Gyűjtemény by the Lutheran superintendent János Kis. From the contexts that were reconstructed in this textual analysis, a discursive network of relationships of texts evolved. These publications, written between the mid-eighteenth century and the Reform Age, can be interpreted as political acts arguing in favour of making Hungarian the official language within the Kingdom of Hungary. A thorough analysis of the article’s contemporary discursive environment points to close relations with the language-political aims at the Hungarian Diet of 1830. It also draws attention to the language-political relevance of the linguistic and cultural strives that can be reconstructed in the background of other texts published in contemporary volumes of Tudományos Gyűjtemény that can be interpreted as discursive political acts, too.