The project is researching this well-known topic of Badeni’s language ordinances from a different perspective. By analyzing and integrating some of the elements of the concepts of Street Politics (Thomas Latschenberger), the project aims to provide a stronger justification for the interactions between the “street” and collective violence. Collective violence and street politics of the year 1897 will be studied on three levels – causes, events, and consequences. Accordingly, the first part of my project will be based on examining how and why the riots and demonstrations mobilized so many participants for collective violence. To answer this question, the influence of politicians on the masses will be studied, analyzing politicians’ public activities, stenographic protocols, and political media. In the second level of my research, police and court records, as well as media will be studied to answer the question about the composition of the groups. Applying descriptive statistics, the social groups most prone to collective violence driven by national motives and most susceptible to political propaganda are analyzed. The third level of the research is based on the analysis of the consequences of collective violence in Cisleithania with regard to the influence of the riots of 1897 on media narratives and language, applying a critical discourse analysis methodology. Thus, the last research question is the following: how the dialogue between the press and the street changed the media discourses when describing collective violence in different phases of the 1897 riots, and whether a specific “language of violence” was created in the course of the riots. This way, the project aims to contribute not only to the debates of the political mobilization in the late 19th century, but also to understand the mentality of violence before the First World War.
