Book review: Language and Identity in the Balkans

[Harold F. Schiffman]

Forwarded from Linguist-List,

Date: 17-Dec-2004
From: Matthew Ciscel <ciscelm at ccsu.edu>
Subject: Language and Identity in the Balkans


AUTHOR: Greenberg, Robert D.
 TITLE: Language and Identity in the Balkans
 SUBTITLE: Serbo-Croatian and its Disintegration
 PUBLISHER: Oxford University Press
 YEAR: 2004
 Announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/15/15-526.html


 Matthew H. Ciscel, Department of English, Central Connecticut State
 University

 Language often plays a central, symbolic role in ethno-national
 movements and conflicts.  The movements and conflicts that have
 arisen from the collapse of state communism in Eastern Europe are no
 exception.  Indeed, language has played a central role in many recent
 conflicts in the region, from Estonia to Moldova and Chechnya to
 Yugoslavia.  Among these, the catastrophic disintegration of
 Yugoslavia stands out for the conflict's brutality and the region's
 proximity to Western Europe, for which World War II remains a strong
 warning against the dangers of ethno-nationalist extremism.  The role
 of language in this and other such conflicts, however, remains
 understudied.  Robert Greenberg's monograph begins to correct this
 deficiency by providing a detailed and insightful exploration of the
 struggles over language that have been intertwined with the military,
 political, and diplomatic conflicts in the successor states of the former
 Yugoslavia.

 SUMMARY

 The brief introductory chapter begins with an anecdote of the author's
 visit to the grave of Ljudevit Gaj, a nineteenth century Croat language
 reformer recognized as one of the founders of the unified Serbo-
 Croatian language.  A series of other short and engaging illustrations
 from the author's fieldwork are then followed by an outline of goals
 and a cursory discussion of relevant literature regarding the ex-
 Yugoslav sociolinguistic context.  As the author points out, the
 study "fills an important gap in Balkan studies" in that it "addresses
 specific controversies surrounding the four successor languages to
 Serbo-Croatian: Serbian, Montenegrin, Croatian, and Bosnian" (3).
 Methodologically, the book draws on vast primary sources, primarily
 published grammars, newspaper articles, and conference
 proceedings, and approaches the processes of language
 standardization and national identity formation from a macro-social
 perspective, i.e. from the point of view of language specialists,
 politicians, and other elites.  The introduction ends with a discussion
 of whether Serbo-Croatian is or ever was a language.  With reference
 to Kloss's (1978) classic distinction between Abstand and Ausbau
 processes of establishing language status, Greenberg draws a
 connection between the uncertain status of standardized forms of
 Serbo-Croatian and the central political role of language differences in
 the region.  Indeed, the language status issue is primarily political
 (Fasold 2004).

 The second chapter explores the history and status of the unified
 Serbo-Croatian language in greater detail.  After a discussion of
 models for unified languages, the chapter delves into an overview of
 the major stages of language unification in Yugoslavia from the
 Literary Agreement of 1850, which established a version of the
 Dubrovnik dialect as a common standard, to the Novi Sad Agreement
 of 1954 that established a pluricentric unity, foreshadowing the
 splintering of languages that has paralleled the socio-political
 splintering of Yugoslavia.  Also covered in this chapter are the
 empirical dialect differences that exist across the region (but, notably,
 do not coincide with political boundaries), the struggle over alphabets
 and spelling norms, and the difficult issue of lexical borrowing and
 purification.  As throughout the subsequent chapters, a table of key
 dates at the end of the chapter (p. 55) summarizes the main events in
 the development and demise of the unified language.

 Each of the next four chapters, making up the bulk of the book, focus
 in on each of the four successor languages of Serbo-Croatian.  The
 first, in chapter 3, is Serbian.  As the political center of the former
 Yugoslavia, Serbia inherited many of the language planning problems
 from Serbo-Croatian.  For instance, as Greenberg explains, the
 Serbian language is still split between the two main dialects of Serbo-
 Croation: the western, ijekavian dialect and the eastern, ekavian
 dialect.  Serbian also must still come to terms with two alphabets,
 since many minorities in Serbia and Montenegro know only the Latin
 script.  The struggle between varieties of Serbian nationalism and
 pluralism has been played out, in part, through the medium of
 language debates.  The result has been a "unified Serbian language
 in its current fractured form [that] will be subjected to still more
 emotional debates and controversies, but little linguistic change in
 practice" (87).  As such, Serbian remains, structurally and status-wise,
 the most direct descendant of Serbo-Croatian.

 The fourth chapter, "Montenegrin: A mountain out of a mole hill?",
 explores the establishment of the most controversial of the successor
 languages.  Greenberg lays out the political motivations for the split
 from Serbian, explaining in detail the structural and historical
 justifications for a separate language.  Montenegrin is based on
 dialectal differences from the dominant ekavian dialect of central
 Serbia and the distinct literary tradition in Montenegro.  Specific
 features of the ijekavian dialect base and divergent spelling norms are
 discussed and outlined with clear examples.  Greenberg concludes
 that the status of Montenegrin as a distinct language will depend
 greatly on the scheduled 2006 referendum on political independence
 in Montenegro.

 Chapter five, which focuses on Croatian, explains the deep historical
 roots and relative unity of the Croatian standard.  Greenberg also
 illustrates the purist and nativist tendencies in defining the new
 standard, as Croatian distances itself from Serbo-Croatian.  These
 tendencies have led to disputes regarding the use of foreign borrowed
 words and the establishment of new orthographic norms.  The chapter
 concludes by pointing to the potential for more tolerant approaches to
 language purism as tensions between Croatia and Serbia deflate.

 Chapter six covers the last of the successor languages, "Bosnian: A
three-humped camel?"  Based on the urban dialects of the Bosniac (read
Muslim) population, the emerging standard distinguishes itself
structurally by its greater number of borrowed words from Turkish and
Arabic and a few small phonological features like greater use of initial
/h/.  In addition, Greenberg provides details of the political effort to
create Ausbau, i.e. to legitimize the existence of a distinct Bosnian
standard that is more than a compromise between the Serbian and Croatian
that are also widely spoken in Bosnia-Herzegovina.  As the author points
out, the recognition of standard Bosnian not only legitimizes the
existence of the Bosnian state, it also ironically weakens that state by
driving its three ethno-political factions (Bosniacs, Croats, and Serbs)
further apart.

 Finally, the short concluding chapter summarizes the major events in
 the splintering of Serbo-Croatian and the key issues that have arisen
 from the establishment of the four successor languages.  Greenberg
 also looks to the future of ethno-linguistic conflict in the region,
 concluding that, within a generation or two, the descendants of Serbo-
 Croatian speakers perhaps "will not be able to understand one
 another any longer" (167).  In essence, the experiment of south Slavic
 linguistic unification will likely have failed, along with the political
 unification.  This final chapter is followed by two appendices
 (containing the texts of the 1850 Literary Agreement and the 1954
 Novi Sad Agreement), a list of works cited, and a useful index.

 EVALUATION

 Although the book is very well written and fills an important gap in
 Balkan studies, there are two weaknesses that warrant comment.  The
 first concerns the presentation of phonological and orthographic data
 for the four successor languages.  Despite the many examples and
 clear use of tables, the presentation of this data is often obscured by
 lack of clarity in orthographic differences across the languages and in
 phonological representations.  Many readers would have greatly
 benefited from a key or appendix that provided a comprehensive
 guide to the spelling norms across the four varieties.  In addition, the
 phonological information, although written in the slanting brackets
 commonly used to represent phonemes, did not clearly follow a
 particular standard, such as the International Phonetic Alphabet.
 These shortcomings could make the examples and some of the
 related ideas less accessible to readers who are not specialists in
 Slavic linguistics or who are not native speakers of English.  Even so,
 this concern is relatively minor and likely would not impact the general
 understanding of the book's main points.

 A somewhat greater shortcoming is the relatively narrow scope of the
 discussion in the book.  For instance, although the title suggests
 otherwise, the book never discusses the relevance of language and
 identity issues in the former Yugoslavia to other conflict zones in the
 Balkans (Turkish in Greece, Hungarian in Transylvania, Russian in
 Moldova) or in other parts of the world (Western Europe, South
 America, West Africa, etc.).  In addition, language and identity are
 construed from a strictly macro-social point of view, focusing on
 Fishman's (1999:161) notions of ethnic identity as reflected in
 language policies and elite constructs of ethnicity.  There is no
 discussion of micro-social notions of identity, for instance among
 individual language users in specific interactional contexts, which has
 been the focus of much recent research on language and identity
 (Laitin 1998, Jaffe 1999, Kroskrity 1999, Joseph 2004, among
 others).  Relatedly, greater inclusion of the author's ethnographic
 observations, like those in the introduction, would have fleshed out the
 practical implications of many of the elite movements and conflicts that
 were described in such thorough detail.  Finally, a more detailed look
 at how language issues were or were not integrated into the analyses
 of traditional histories of Yugoslavia's demise (such as Bennett
 1995:25-26) might have also provided the reader a broader
 understanding of the relevance of the book's contents.  In sum, this
 reader would have liked to see greater exploration of relevant
 secondary literature from a broader range of theoretical and regional
 perspectives.

 These minor criticisms aside, the book is a coherent, detailed, and
 original contribution to scholarship in South Slavic studies, Balkan
 studies, sociolinguistics in general, and the intersection of language
 and identity, in particular.  It is highly recommended reading for
 anyone interested in the Balkans or in issues of language and
 identity.  The many examples from primary sources and the clear
 writing style make the book accessible and relevant to a wide range of
 readers.  Finally, the book meets its primary goal of explaining and
 illustrating the often misunderstood motivations and mechanics of
 Serbo-Croatian's disintegration.

 REFERENCES

 Bennett, Christopher. 1995. Yugoslavia's Bloody Collapse: Causes,
 Course and Consequences. New York: New York University Press.

 Fasold, Ralph W. 2004.  subtle linguistic science: The social
 construction of `a language.' Ms.

 Fishman, Joshua A., editor. 1999. Handbook of Language and Ethnic
 Identity. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

 Jaffe, Alexandra. 1999. Ideologies in Action: Language politics in
 Corsica. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

 Joseph, John. 2004. Language and Identity. Houndmills: Palgrave
 Macmillan.

 Kloss, Heinz. 1967. Abstand languages and Ausbau languages.
 Anthropological Linguistics 9, 29-41.

 Kroskrity, Paul V., editor. 1999. Regimes of Language: Ideologies,
 polities, and identities. Sante Fe: School of American Research Press.

 Laitin, David D. 1998. Identity in Formation: The Russian-speaking
 populations in the near abroad. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

 ABOUT THE REVIEWER

 Matt Ciscel has an M.A. in German from the University of Iowa and a
 Ph.D. in Linguistics from the University of South Carolina, Columbia.
 His research focuses on language and identity in the ex-Soviet
 Republic of Moldova.  As an assistant professor at Central
 Connecticut State University, he teaches courses in sociolinguistics,
 the history of the English language, ESL methodologies, and world
 Englishes.