Following the 19th-century language debates on the language of science and higher education, this paper follows three Polish texts from the middle of the century dealing with the Galician school and university system. These dispositives of language discourse, defined here as an outcome of the transformations at the nexus of hegemony, linguistic theories and the remainders of the Republic of Letters ideology, are analysed concerning the positioning of the Polish language as confronted with German and Ruthenian/Ukrainian, as well as the political implications resulting from the perceived misbalance. Given the political context of Habsburg neoabsolutism’s hierarchical understanding of languages and its application, the authors deal with both deconstructing the underlying ideology concerning German, and sustain it regarding Ruthenian