УЛОГА СРПСКЕ ЕЛИТЕ У СТВАРАЊУ ЛИНГВОПОЛИТИЧКОГА КОНСТРУКТА „СРПСКОХРВАТСКИ ЈЕЗИК”

Abstract

After the adoption of the Serb language (the so-called Shtokavian) as a literary language among Croats under the Illyrian movement of the 1830s, namely after the establishment of a shared literary language for Serbs and Croats, the linguistic-political paradigm of a common „Serbo-Croatian” language was gradually accepted in Serb language studies. As a consequence, Serb language studies faced difficulties regarding crucial academic and theoretical issues, the effects of which would be felt to this day. A significant role in this was played by a part of the Serb philological elite in the 19th and 20th centuries, who opted for the Yugoslav idea. Consequently, the Yugoslav-oriented Serb linguists rejected the Miklošič‑Karadžić theory about the Serb language („Shtokavian”) and the Croat language („Chakavian”) as different languages, adjusting their linguistic approach to the newly set ideological goals. Moreover, the adoption of the Yugoslav idea involved, both then and later, mostly a condescending and flattering approach to the Croats (and even Europe), and concessions to the detriment of Serb academic and national interests, for reasons that were not always entirely clear. As good examples of the sophisticated Serb collaboration with the Yugoslav ideology we may cite some parts of Jovan Skerlić’s and Aleksandar Belić’s theories. Fascinated by the idea that it was necessary to create an even more uniform literary language for Serbs and Croats (including even Slovenians), Skerlić launched immediately before World War I a survey on the literary language, proposing the Ekavian speech and Latin alphabet as the unifying factors of a new, more unified literary language. In this respect, Belić’s study Srbija i južnoslovensko pitanje (Serbia and the South Slavic Issue), published at the height of the war (1915), served as a kind of a political manifesto aimed at the unification of Serbs, Croats and Slovenians, where the author tried to frame the language issue as the guiding idea of the Yugoslav political enterprise. Keywords: Serb language, „Serbo-Croatian” linguistic construct, Yugoslav ideology, linguistic‑political studies, Jovan Skerlić, Aleksandar Belić.