The Language of the Socialist Man. The Case of Istrian Periodicals

Abstract

The paper presents the language and orthography of the Istrian printed media in the second half of the 20th century, that is, in the period of socialism. The research corpus consists of some five hundred issues of the following Istrian magazines and journals of workers’ or civic organizations: “Raski rudar”, “Uljanik”, “Nas glas”, “Porecki glasnik”, “Kulturni vjesnik”, “Istra”, “Istarski borac”, “Istarski mozaik” and “Buzetski zbornik”. Linguistic and orthographical analyses of these journals, primarily workers’ and youth journals, were conducted in an effort to identify their tendencies and degree of compliance with standards and rules prescribed by the normative manuals of the time. Dualities, numerous versions and inconsistencies, presented by level (orthography, morphology, word formation, syntax, vocabulary and style), within the magazines themselves serve as evidence of the impact of breaking events pertaining to Croatian language in the second half of the 20th century (from the period of AVNOJ, the Meeting in Novi Sad, and the “Novi Sad orthography agreement”, the Declaration on the name and position of the official Croatian language, and the Croatian Spring movement until the nineties), whereas the diachronic changes speak of the development process the language and orthography went through at the time. On the other hand, texts covering philological topics, primarily published in magazines and papers on culture and society, indicate a high level of awareness and consideration for the language of the simple man living in the period of socialism. Finally, analyses of this type play a significant role in the overall presentation of the recent history of Croatian language in Istria.