Attitudes of serbian politicians about the language in Bosnia and Herzegovina 1991-1995.

Abstract

The topic of this article does not cover the views of all Serbian politicians on the language in Bosnia and Herzegovina from the beginning of the 1990s, at least not those who remained in the convocation of the Assembly of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina and who were opponents of the policy of the Serbian Democratic Party, that is, they did not agree with it. In this paper, we analyze shorthand notes from the so-called Assembly of the Serbian people in Bosnia and Herzegovina from 1991 to 1995 (from January 1992, the so-called Republic of the Serbian People of Bosnia and Herzegovina; and from March 1992, the so-called Serbian Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and from September 1992, the Republic of Srpska). The aim of this paper is twofold. One is analyzing the nationalist attitudes of Serbian politicians about the language in Bosnian society from the beginning of the 1990s, while the other is pointing out the presence of some open and tolerant attitudes. Topic wise, we follow the narrative about the use of the alphabet or the discussion about the relationship between the Latin and Cyrillic alphabets. Moreover, particular focus is on the discourse about the name of the language and the mutual relationship between the linguistic identities of Serbs, Croats and Bosniak Muslims. Lastly, we will pay special attention to the issue of Ekavica (ekavian speech) and the model of political partialness and imposition of the Ekavian language of identity in the dialect space to which it does not originally belong. As the use of Ekavica was the biggest point of contention in the debates of Serbian politicians, in this paper we will additionally refer to a brief historical overview of the status of Ekavica in the Bosnian society, especially in education. Documents about the usage of Ekavica in special circumstances will also be presented in this paper. As the documents show, however, Ekavica is a means of spreading Serbian national interests in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Following some ideas of proposed or adopted legislative acts on language from the beginning of the 1990s, we will analyze the transcripts from a total of thirteen parliamentary sessions where language was discussed, along with about twenty individually expressed views during parliamentary procedures. As a thorough presentation or analysis of all of the above would exceed the usual article length, we will present only some parliamentary positions directly as sources. Other views will be systematized and analyzed as a group through the discussion and conclusions. Views that directly concern the current organization of our society and state will be particularly dealt with. In that regard, significant data on how Serbian is positioned in relation to the Bosnian and Croatian languages through the directly stated views of Serbian political representatives on several occasions and at separate parliamentary sessions can also be observed. Two opposing models were found – tolerance in language views, on one hand, and open discrimination and linguistic imperialism in the misuse of language for political purposes on the other hand. The starting motive for research of this type is a contextualized relationship to the current situation in connection with official negative attitudes towards language rights in the Bosnian entity the Republic of Srpska, with a special contextual connection with the latest legislative acts – the so-called unity of the Serbian cultural space, the guidelines for the unified cultural and educational policy of the Serbian people (from 2019), and the Declaration on the borders of the Serbian language (from 2022) – without directly entering into the content elements thereof.