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Symbolism, communication and cultural hierarchy. Galician discourses of language hegemony at the beginning of the second half of the nineteenth century
Following the th-century language debates on the language of science andhigher education, this paper follows three Polish texts from the middle ofthe century dealing with the Galician school and university system. Thesedispositives of language discourse, defined here as an outcome of the transfor-mations at the nexus of hegemony, linguistic theories and the remainders ofthe Republic of Letters ideology, are analysed concerning the positioning ofthe Polish language as confronted with German and Ruthenian/Ukrainian,as well as the political implications resulting from the perceived misbal-ance. Given the political context of Habsburg neoabsolutism’s hierarchicalunderstanding of languages and its application, the authors deal with bothdeconstructing the underlying ideology concerning German, and sustain itregarding Ruthenian.