In the article, the author describes how different interpretations of Yugoslavism and selfmanagement clashed in a public debate on the institute of Jezikovno razsodišče (Linguistic Court) after the Cankarjev dom incident that occurred on 22 March 1982. The first public pan-Yugoslavian debate about the nature of the Slovenian nationalism in 1980s merged the problem with the use of the Slovenian language and that of the position of immigrants who had come to the Socialist Republic of Slovenia from other Yugoslavian republics into a dangerous blend of linguistic, cultural, economic and political disagreements, which undermined the very ideological basis of the transnational socialist (and self-regulatory) Yugoslavism.