Language Ideologies and Schoolscapes in Hungarian Medium Schools beyond Hungary

The ‘schoolscape’ can be analyzed as a display or materialization of the ‘hidden curriculum’ regarding the construction of linguistic and cultural identities. In addition, we can investigate the role the schoolscape has for language education, where I argue that it constitutes a major affordance. Based on a qualitative analysis of signs and discourses – gathered during multi-sited fieldwork in 2011-2013 on Hungarian medium educational contexts in Romania, Slovakia and Ukraine – I ask, how different vernaculars, languages of learning, teaching and school administration are displayed in the schoolscape. Which language ideologies, languages, language varieties or cultural and national symbols have hegemony in the schoolscape and which get erased from it? I conclude that even though there are many Hungarian symbols and Hungarian texts on display in the investigated schools the hierarchy of languages and their status in education are still clearly displayed in the schoolscapes, which is especially evident in the placement and intended use of centrally distributed signs in the majority language.