Peeling the onion top-down: Language policy in Serbia between power and myth

Branimir Stanković,Marija Stefanović

doi:10.12681/awpel.20022

Branimir Stanković, Marija Stefanović

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.12681/awpel.20022

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Abstract

This paper considers the issue of language policy and planning in Serbia, as managed by the main competent institution, the Serbian Language Standardization Committee, a trans-state, national institution dealing with vital issues of language policy and planning. Specifically, assuming a Bourdieusian perspective, it investigates the ideology behind the Committee’s policies, grounded in a series of language myths, and the way these policies influence professionals and everyday language users. The effects of a rigid, strict educational system and a standard language culture by educators are shown in detail focusing on the Torlak dialect in Southern Serbia. The Serbian case reveals a constant promotion of censorship and a heightened understanding of the benefits of self-censorship in the language market. This can be seen in the pressure exerted on certain speakers and the threat their mother tongue represents for their status in the labor market.

Highlights

The paper examined the discrepancy between the minor executive power held by official Serbian language authorities and the considerable informal influence it has on Serbian society and public discourse, based on powerful mythologies regarding language and language policy
21 Unlike standard Serbian, which has a stress system consisting of four accents and a case system of seven cases, the Southern Torlak dialect has only one accent and three case forms
“prescriptive tendencies of Serbian planners are most commonly explained as purely scientific decisions based on particular linguistic, structural features of Serbian” (Filipović 2012), the standard language culture in Serbia is often based on the myth that the language industry contributes to the gatekeeping function of social institutions

Summary

Introduction

This paper considers the issue of language policy and planning in Serbia, as managed by the main competent institution, the Serbian Language Standardization Committee. it investigates, from Bourdieu’s (1977, 1991) perspective, the ideology behind its policies, grounded in a series of language myths, and the way in which. Saussure’s dichotomy between langue vs parole suggests that all speakers are in principle replaceable, assuming commonality vis-à-vis use of language and everyday speech practices This means that language itself, as an independent structure, is exempted from social, economic, and cultural context –as corroborated by Chomsky: Linguistic theory is concerned primarily with an ideal speaker-listener, in a completely homogeneous speech-community, who knows its language perfectly and is unaffected by such grammatically irrelevant conditions as memory limitations, distractions, shifts of attention and interest, and errors (random or characteristic) in applying his knowledge of the language in actual performance. Considering the above, in the following subsection we will analyze some official statements, decisions, recommendations, measures, and initiatives enacted by the Serbian Language Standardization Committee and its representatives This will corroborate the nationalistic discourse of Serbian language policy authorities and reveal how this discourse creates a specific, ideologically based linguistic culture

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Conclusion