CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2025
| Author | Mede, Helena |
|---|---|
| Title | The Amendment to the Slovak State Language Act: A Necessary Measure to Protect the Slovak Language or a Tool of Minority Control? |
| Summary | This thesis examines the 2024 amendment to the State Language Act in Slovakia, analyzing its socio-political implications in regards to language policy and nationalism. While the Ministry of Culture, which proposed the amendment, insists that it is a neutral measure aimed at strengthening the status of the Slovak language, legal experts and minority rights advocates have raised concerns about its disproportionate impact on ethnic minorities, particularly the Hungarian-speaking population. Placing the amendment within the broader historical context of Slovak language policy, the thesis explores how nationalism and historical myth-making have shaped the state’s approach to linguistic regulation. Drawing on discourse analysis and legal interpretation, it investigates whether the amendment functions not only as a tool of language management but also as a mechanism of symbolic nation-building. Ultimately, the study argues that the 2024 amendment reflects a form of ethnolinguistic nationalism, revealing how contemporary legislation continues to be informed by historical narratives and upholds measures which become harmful for minority languages in the long term. |
| Supervisor | Luca Varadi |
| Department | Legal Studies MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2025/mede_helena.pdf |
Visit the CEU Library.
© 2007-2021, Central European University