Program title: Linguistic Landscape of Transcarpathia
Year: 2001–present
Brief description: The project builds on the Hodinka Antal Linguistic Research Centre’s multi-decade research programme on the linguistic landscape. From the outset, the Research Centre has continuously collected and monitored signs, notices, advertisements and online interfaces appearing in both the public and private spheres throughout Transcarpathia. Longitudinal data at the settlement level demonstrate how the multilingual environment changes, how the Hungarian language functions in everyday life, and where the consequences of legal restrictions become visible. The research covers official communication, the commercial sphere, religious and cultural life, as well as digital language use.
The sample is based on clusters established according to the proportion of the Hungarian population, using the most recent official Ukrainian census data from 2001. This makes it possible to monitor changes over time according to consistent criteria. One of the central questions of the research is the extent to which the official presence of Hungarian has declined compared with previous years, as well as how social and economic processes—including the war, migration and transformations in the business sector—are reflected in the linguistic landscape: which services and locations have disappeared, changed or become more prominent.
The research also documents visual messages directly referring to the Russo-Ukrainian war, thereby recording linguistic manifestations of collective memory and perceptions of security. In the 2025 phase, a new regionally representative photographic corpus is being created. This continues the long-term longitudinal data series and enables a targeted examination of the wartime linguistic landscape and the identification of its major trends.
Research organiser/supporter: Hodinka Antal Linguistic Research Centre; Hungarian Academy of Sciences DOMUS Programme
Publications: