Language Discourse and Borders in the Yugoslav Successor States

[Harold F. Schiffman]

 Language, Discourse and Borders in the Yugoslav Successor States
Multilingual Matters 2004
 Announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/15/15-2502.html


 Donald F. Reindl, Department of Translation, Faculty of Arts, University
 of Ljubljana, Slovenia

 SUMMARY

 Language, Discourse and Borders in the Yugoslav Successor States is a
 collection of four essays by scholars of language and identity, followed
 by a "debate" among the authors plus additional scholars, and concluding
 with three response papers. The volume is the result of a roundtable
 discussion entitled "Language, Discourse and Borders" held at the
 University of Vienna's Institute of Linguistics on 29 September 2002 and
 hosted by the Centre for Intercultural Studies, based at the University of
 Klagenfurt, Austria.

 Brigitta Busch (University of Vienna) and Helen Kelly-Holmes (University
 of Limerick) introduce the collection by addressing broad theoretical
 concepts such as the centrality of the nation state and the constructs
 that underlie state borders, language boundaries, and speech communities.
 Special attention is turned to the role of the media in affirming language
 boundaries as a linguistic resource, in the implementation of language
 policy, and as a metalinguistic forum. The authors then focus on the case
 of Serbo-Croatian in the former Yugoslavia and its ongoing differentiation
 since the 1990s into Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian, and Montenegrin.

 Dubravko Skiljan (Institutum Studiorum Humanitas, Ljubljana) uses the
 analogy of a train journey from Belgrade to Munich (and intermediate
 points) to illustrate how perceptions of dialect continua, linguistically
 mixed areas, and contact between non mutually-intelligible languages vary
 depending on the perspective of the observer. He clarifies theoretical
 issues such as the nation-state, linguistic communities, and the
 territories claimed by those communities by illustrating them with
 concrete linguistic examples from the former Yugoslavia and beyond.

 The article by Ranko Bugarski (University of Belgrade) is a sober look at
 the former Serbo-Croatian, proceeding from the notion that both ethnicity
 and nationalism are artificial constructs (21). He debunks the idea that
 Serbo-Croatian was ever truly unified, despite political agreements or
 proclamations to the contrary --from the Vienna Agreement of 1850 to the
 Novi Sad Agreement of 1954 -- and concludes that the breakup of the
 language in the 1990s clearly had historical roots (28). In particular, he
 examines how the rhetoric of politics can feed conflict, which in turn can
 foster overt language differentiation when language is subverted as an
 agent (and becomes a casualty) of war (30).

 Dona Kolar-Panov (Ss. Cyril and Methodius University, Skopje) provides a
 detailed picture of language policy in Macedonia as realized through
 broadcasting. In addition to Macedonian, the country's official media
 broadcast in Albanian, Turkish, Roma, Aromanian (Vlach), and Serbian. At
 the same time, unlicensed broadcasting has contributed to media chaos in
 Macedonia. Although the licensed broadcasts are officially intended to
 promote a diverse and multicultural identity, in some cases a linguistic
 ghetto effect has been created instead. Kolar-Panov contrasts the
 integrative approach of Roma television, which broadcasts in both Roma and
 Macedonian, and includes Macedonian subtitling, with the separatist
 approach of Albanian-language broadcasting, which is linguistically and
 culturally exclusive and has created a parallel independent media.
 Ultimately, she argues, media exclusivity breeds animosity, whereas
 inclusiveness fosters tolerance (47).

 The debate in the middle of the volume amplifies some of the ideas raised
 in the papers, including the implications of naming languages and the
 dictionaries of those languages as reification of political programs.
 Bugarski points out that one should take care not to confuse language
 policies with linguistics, because linguists are rarely instrumental in
 establishing such policies.

 Tatiana Zhurzhenko's (Kharkiv National University) response profiles the
 linguistic situation in Ukraine, which has a number of parallels with the
 territory on which the former Serbo-Croatian is spoken, including marked
 religious, cultural, historical, and dialect differences. Although
 Zhurzhenko states that Ukraine presents an ethnically simpler picture than
 the Balkans, she oversimplifies the situation herself -- for example, by
 referring to Rusyn groups (e.g., Lemkos and Bojkos, 68) as ethnic
 Ukrainians. Her observation that today's territorially "United Ukraine" is
 a legacy of nation building and language cultivation during the Soviet era
 (69) is paralleled by similar observations regarding Slovenia (e.g., Gow &
 Carmichael 2000: 60) and Macedonia in the Yugoslav context.

 Marija Mitrovic's (University of Trieste) brief contribution is a response
 to Bugarski's article. It is mostly a personal reflection on her own
 multilingual experience in the former Yugoslavia. While rightly pointing
 out that bilingualism was the norm for many in Yugoslavia, she paints an
 overly ideal picture of the country with statements such as "When you came
 to Slovenia, you were simply expected to speak in that language" or that
 no translation was needed between "Slovak, or Slovenian, or Kajkavian
 Croatian" (76). In practice, Serbian and Croatian speakers often lived in
 Slovenia for decades without learning the language -- and the diversity of
 Slovenian is so great that some dialects are not mutually intelligible,
 let alone understood by Slovaks or Croats.

 Melitta Richter Malabotta (University of Trieste) concludes the volume
 with a response examining the semantics of war in former Yugoslavia. Like
 Mitrovic, she paints an overly multicultural picture: "In former
 Yugoslavia ... the majority of people were used to being bialphabetical,
 that is, able to read and write both Latin and Cyrillic characters" (78).
 While it is true that Serbian and Macedonian speakers generally read the
 Latin alphabet without difficulty, the converse was not true -- after
 relatively brief exposure in the classroom, Slovenians and Croatians
 generally maintained little or no proficiency in reading Cyrillic. Her
 assertion that "everything that represented the texture of union ... is
 destroyed and considered definitely past" (82) is also an
 overgeneralization. In recent years there has been a noticeable resurgence
 of "Yugonostalgia" (cultural rather than political) in Slovenia and
 Croatia, spawning publications such as a recent lexicon on the topic
 (e.g., Matic et al. 2004) and increasing Slovenian attendance at Serbian
 folk festivals (Staudohar 2004). Nonetheless, her commentary on the
 artificiality with which Croatian is being differentiated from Serbian is
 accurate and concise.

 EVALUATION

 One shortcoming of the collection is that its contents do not entirely
 correspond to the title of the volume. Among the languages of Yugoslavia,
 the essays generally focus on the former Serbo-Croatian, aside from the
 contribution by Kolar-Panov on Macedonian and Albanian. Slovenian is only
 mentioned in passing on a few occasions. This omission of what was an
 official language of Yugoslavia is a lost opportunity, because the
 sociolinguistic situation in Slovenia today offers ample material matching
 the issues raised concerning the other languages, including broadcasting
 rights, purism, and protectionist legislation (e.g., Reindl 2002a, 2002b,
 2003). In addition, much could have been said about small minority
 languages in the former Yugoslavia, such as the Ruthenian of Serbia's
 Vojvodina region or the Aromanian of Macedonia. At the same time, the
 inclusion of Zhurzhenko's article on Ukrainian is incongruous in the face
 of such omissions. The linguistic situation in Ukraine is certainly
 interesting, and one may draw some parallels between language conflict in
 Ukraine and the former Yugoslavia. However, from a geographical
 perspective it would have been more appropriate to include a study of
 language in neighboring Albania, Greece, or Bulgaria because of the
 linguistic overlaps between the territories of these states and theformer
 Yugoslavia.

 Despite its diversity, the volume is tied together by a number of common
 themes, such as the notion of "soft" and "hard" borders (e.g., dialect
 continua or typological dissimilarities), elaborated in Skiljan (15-16).
 Another common theme is the relative linguistic inertness of Serbian as a
 successor to Serbo-Croatian, while proponents of Croatian, Bosnian, and
 Montenegrin as independent languages (with decreasing success) have been
 forced to differentiate these linguistic systems from the former shared
 norm. At the same time, intriguing individual observations are raised,
 such as fluid ethnicity crystallizing into hard nationalism through the
 catalyst of conflict (34) and popular perceptions of bilingualism as
 contamination or victimization (71).

 Linguists that are unfamiliar with the history of the South Slavic
 languages and peoples will welcome Bugarski's concise explanation of the
 major linguistic divisions of the former Serbo-Croatian as well as the
 different religions and scripts of its speakers (23-24). These basic fault
 lines are so important for understanding the conflicts discussed
 throughout the volume that the editors could have placed the information
 in some sort of preface to the collection. Without it, the passing
 references to cakavian and stokavian (16), or ekavian and jekavian (79),
 would be meaningless to the majority of readers.

 Because of the relation between legislation and language use -- be it in
 public institutions or the media -- politics is an essential topic when
 examining language policy. In general, the contributors to the volume
 focus on politics and policy decisions that are relevant to the topic at
 hand; for example, Kolar-Panov's cogent discussion of broadcasting
 legislation in Macedonia and its effect on the ratios of Macedonian-,
 Albanian-, and Roma-language material on television. Unfortunately,
 Malabotta uses the conclusion of her essay to rage against Nazism, Tony
 Blair, NATO, and US military action in Afghanistan. Not only is the misuse
 of a linguistics publication as a soapbox for one's personal views
 inappropriate, but it also provides a disagreeable conclusion to an
 otherwise interesting collection.

 REFERENCES

 Gow, James; & Cathy Carmichael (2000) Slovenia and the Slovenes. A Small
 State and the New Europe. London: Hurst & Company.

 Matic, Djordje, Iris Adric, & Vladimir Arsenijevic (2004) Leksikon YU
 mitologije [Lexicon of Yugoslav Mythology]. Zagreb/Belgrade:
 Postscriptum/Rendum.

 Reindl, Donald F. (2002a) Academy Adopts Language Declaration. In RFE/RL
 Balkan Report 6(16), available at
http://www.rferl.org/reports/balkan-report/2002/04/16-190402.asp

 Reindl, Donald F. (2002b) Slovenian: Alive and Well. In RFE/RL Balkan
 Report 6(36), available at
 http://www.rferl.org/reports/balkan-report/2002/10/36-041002.asp

 Reindl, Donald F. (2003) Struggle for Slovenian Radio in Austria. In
 RFE/RL Newsline 7(30), available at
 http://www.rferl.org/newsline/2003/02/140203.asp

 Staudohar, Irena (2004) Med nostalgijo in zabavo [Between Nostalgia and a
 Party]. In Zurnal, 26 November 2004, pp. 1, 4.