Ethnographic accounts of linguistic issues in the Yugoslav successor states: An introduction

Roswitha Kersten-Pejanić

doi:10.12681/awpel.20025

Roswitha Kersten-Pejanić

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.12681/awpel.20025

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Abstract

Doing ethnographic linguistics (or linguistic ethnography) in the area of what used to be Yugoslavia is both a challenging and a promising undertaking. Challenging, in that there are so many ideological traps to take into consideration. Promising, in that there are so many complex matters to take a closer look at. These matters, even when exclusively realized in linguistic means, may have great influence on people’s everyday political, cultural, and social meaning-making. Especially so, as indexical relations and the ideological premises and effects of choosing to use one linguistic realization over the other, has played an important role for all speech communities in the region.

Highlights

Doing ethnographic linguistics in the area of what used to be Yugoslavia is both a challenging and a promising undertaking
Linguistic encounters on Southeastern Europe both within and outside the former Yugoslav lands have been able to study and contribute to a wide range of language planning activities in the region over the past decades (Friedman 1998; many of the contributions in Schaller 1997; Toporišič 1997; Kamusella 2016). This possibility of linguistics being used as a political tool is exponentially increased in times of ideological debates based on nationality, ethnicity or any other aspect of identity-making
This declaration is a frequent reference point in conversations on language use in the countries that used to share a language until the official nationalization and standardization of four separate languages –Bosnian, Croatian, Montenegrin, and Serbian– took place, at different stages, after the breakup of Yugoslavia

Summary

Introduction

Doing ethnographic linguistics (or linguistic ethnography) in the area of what used to be Yugoslavia is both a challenging and a promising undertaking. In this sense, looking at the research outcomes of language studies from the last couple of decades on a meta-level, we realize how linguistics itself is an interesting object of ethnographic accounts in former Yugoslavia and its successor states.

Results

Conclusion