National Language Construction Via Language Census In Central Europe:A Comparison Between Czechia,Slovakia And Hungary

Since the mid-20th century,about 150 countries/regions around the world have conducted language-related surveys in the population census.The language census can be used as a macro-level management tool to consolidate citizens’ national language identity.Many scholars mainly focus on exploring European and American countries,but there is little research on Central Europe with deep nationalism.This research reveals the guiding ideology of Central European countries in language census from the conceptual level by researching the language census behavior in Central Europe,and explores how language census supports national language construction from the technical level.This research mainly answers the following three research questions:(1)What national language constructing considerations can be revealed in census questionnaires of Central European countries?(2)What technical approaches are used in the population censuses?(3)What are the actual effects of national language construction?The research is designed based on the theories of Language Management Theory,Critical Discourse Analysis and Linguistic Identity.The researcher first obtained questionnaires from the national statistical offices of the Czech Republic,Slovakia and Hungary for the last 3-4 censuses,then made a textual analysis of the contents and forms of language and ethnic-related issues,and then made comparative research with the diachronic changes of census results and interview contents.The major findings of this research are as follows:(1)The Czech Republic,Slovakia and Hungary all set questions related to "mother tongue" in the multi-year census questionnaire,and juxtaposed "nationality" with"mother tongue",which shows that all countries have a profound nationalist tradition and attach great importance to the national language status;Slovakia and Hungary have recently begun to collect information about the usage of "common languages" in different places,which shows that countries are trying to balance the influence of multilingual ideology in the construction of national languages after joining the European Union.(2)In the recent 3-4 census questionnaires,the Czech Republic,Slovakia and Hungary have continuously revised the presentation and answer forms of languagerelated questions,trying to guide the respondents’ answers by adjusting the operational definitions of "nationality" and "mother tongue",the arrangement order of the two items and the optional answers,and the maximum number of reports allowed by the two items,so as to show tolerance for ethnic minorities and increase the proportion of the main ethnic language users.(3)The language survey data show that the national language construction effect in Czech and Hungary is better than that in Slovakia.In the four language surveys in the Czech Republic from 1991 to 2021,the proportion of Czech native speakers to selfclaimed Czechs was 118%,104.9%,138%and 149%,respectively,which showed that the Czech people had a very high degree of recognition of Czech.The results of the two censuses in Hungary in 2001 and 2011 were 101.4%and 101.1%respectively,indicating that the national language identity in Hungary is relatively stable.On the contrary,the data of the three censuses in Slovakia from 2001 to 2021 were 97.8%,97.4%and 97.6%respectively,all of which were lower than 100%,indicating that the country has long faced the challenge of national language identity.The findings of this research are instructive for understanding the language policy and language planning of Central European countries.There are some problems in the research,such as insufficient interviewee samples.In the future,supplementary investigation and analysis can be carried out from other angles,and other Central and Eastern European countries with a history of language census can also be investigated.