Managing the change of prescriptivism in Hungary: adopting the models of change management to L1 education

Abstract

The paper studies the possible role of change management, a well-known term and often used action in the public administration and corporate sector, in supporting the institutional shaping of positive language attitudes towards regional dialects. The theoretical study is based on the presupposition that the application of the sociolinguistic viewpoint in L1 education in Hungary can be understood as a process of change in organizational and corporate culture. The study aims to point out how the lessons of change management can help move the standard-based viewpoint and subtractive practice in mother tongue education more effectively towards a sociolinguistic and additive approach. Besides these viewpoints, the existing regulations and teaching practices regarding language variability in present-day Hungary are also summarized in the paper briefly. The second part presents the change management theory and its two famous models, and discusses what can be learned from them concerning the field of (educational) linguistics.