Acceso usuarios
Katharina Tyran
This paper addresses the conflicts over minority language signage in Austria and Croatia. It first focuses on the ‘Ortstafelstreit’ on German and Slovene public signs in Carinthia with its peak occurring in autumn 1972. At that time, an angry mob tore down recently installed public signage including the minority language. This analysis examines the discursive topoi and strategies adopted by political and social actors that preceded the actual intrusions in the linguistic landscape and that fostered a disposition eliciting the destruction of linguistic signs by individuals. The article further proposes a comparative perspective to the destruction of Croatian-Serbian linguistic signs in Vukovar, which escalated in 2013. This is when Croatian-Serbian (Latin-Cyrillic) signs should have been installed due to the regulation of the constitutional law on minority rights. It first led to local protests in early 2013, followed by spillover protests in the Croatian capital of Zagreb. When bi-graphic signs have been installed in Vukovar, it caused riots and demonstrations, resulting in individuals destroying linguistic signs. Both the encounters in Carinthia and Croatia are situated in the context of minority rights being implement, however strongly influenced by conflictive ideologies going back to recent war, armed conflicts, and national(ist) movements.
